Alfa Romeo’s new car for the 2022 Formula 1 season, the C42, struggled to accumulate mileage during the three days of testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. Among all the tests, the Swiss team could only complete 175 laps , with Haas being the only one to complete fewer laps, 160 between its two drivers.
This lack of filming caused Valtteri Bottas, the new Hinwill driver, to say that the team still had “work to do” for the second test. The Finn was not able to complete a race distance, but he was able to see the potential of the car.
One of the biggest problems Alfa Romeo faced was the phenomenon of porpoising, which surprised the vast majority of teams when they went out to shoot with the new cars, which have great ground effect. This mainly arose in the first two days of testing, before the Swiss ran into mechanical problems that hampered their testing on day three.
Porpoising caught just about everyone off guard, as it’s not an effect they expected in the wind tunnel or simulations. Alfa Romeo technical director Jan Monchaux admitted it was a surprise to see such a big problem.
“To be totally transparent and honest, we hadn’t anticipated it,” Monchaux said.
“In recent months, we had talked about the type of phenomena that could occur, but since none of our tools, such as the wind tunnel and the simulation tools, gave us any clues, we were a bit puzzled.
“I think the same thing has happened to all or most of the teams.”
The teams were forced to make changes to the set-up of their cars during the first pre-season test in order to control the problem, including increasing the height of the car and adjusting the design of its floors.
Monchaux expects that teams will have to set up their cars “taller than we all initially thought”, due to the effect of porpoising .
“The question is how much higher will they have to be? Will it be 3 to 5 millimeters or more like 20?” he said. “I hope it will be five, because then the readjustment of the car will be less. But we will see.”
Alfa Romeo started working on the problem by holding a recording day in Barcelona after the first test, showing off its new red and white livery for the first time after its official unveiling.
Frédéric Vasseur , boss of Alfa Romeo, assured that technical problems “always arise with the new regulations”, but he is confident that the porpoising will be resolved soon.
“I think in two or three races no one will talk about rebounding,” Vasseur said.
“We will have another problem or issue to talk about. But we have to solve it. We have seen, both from our side and from the other teams, that everyone has made great improvements during the first three days and we will all be back next week. with a setup to completely fix it.”
