The Alpine team surprised the entire paddock at the presentation of its new A522 single-seater, when the French revealed two different liveries, one in the typical blue of the sports brand and the other in a completely pink hue. This last design, as confirmed, would be used for the first two dates of the course, that is, in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia , but they were not going to wear it during the pre-season tests, or at least in Barcelona.
For that reason it was even more curious to see that Alpine came out with the pink car on the second day of testing in Shakir, since on Thursday they put the blue livery on the asphalt. Esteban Ocon was in charge of going out on the track in the Middle East with the car that attracted so much attention, with special prominence of his new main sponsor, BWT .
Alpine, after a day full of problems, decided that they would ride all Friday with the French driver, reserving the last day of testing for Fernando Alonso. Precisely the Asturian was the one who suffered the most from the setbacks in the French car because he lost about two hours in the garage while his structure defended that it was due to “a big change in configuration” of the car.
But, after finishing the first test session, the two-time champion admitted that it was a problem in the Alpine, which was discovered shortly after the lunch break. This was confirmed by the words of the Alpine technical director, Pat Fry , who maintained that these were “normal setbacks on a test day”, as well as insisting that they hoped to be able to shoot the rest of the days without much more problems.
Alpine was one of the teams with the fewest kilometers on its meter, since Esteban Ocon’s 42 laps and Fernando Alonso’s 24 barely added up to 66 laps, which translates into little more than a Bahrain Grand Prix.
