Alfa Romeo was one of the teams that disappointed the most in the first three days of pre-season in 2022, although it did let the drivers understand that the new C42 had much more potential than what was seen in Barcelona.
Unlike Ferrari, the only team to exceed 2,000 kilometers in three days, the Hinwil team could only cover 818.1 km, which is equivalent to a distance of less than one grand prix per day.
Alfa Romeo identified the problems of its C42 for F1 2022
The new C42 only left a better feeling than Haas, another Ferrari customer team, however it seems that they were able to identify the problems that they will have to solve before reaching the last days of tests that will take place in Bahrain from 10 to 12 March.
What happened? Alfa Romeo was one of the big victims of the porposing problems due to an extreme design choice: the team focused on getting under the weight limit, which is 795kg, since 10kg more on a track like Barcelona can mean a loss of time of approximately three tenths per lap.
Already in the Fiorano shakedown , Valtteri Bottas warned of porposing problems, the famous phenomenon that at high speeds causes a bounce movement up and down, causing irreparable damage to the rear of the flat bottom.
Engineers led by Jan Manchaux had focused on an ultra-light bottom for the C42 , but that weight saving ended up being more of a disadvantage than an advantage, since as these “jumps” were repeated, the bottom of the car lost more and more weight. more pieces.
The 2022 F1 Alfa Romeo C42 was below the minimum weight
German sources claimed that the C42 was below the minimum weight of 795kg, thanks to having the shortest wheelbase on the entire grid: however, according to information from Motorsport.com, the Swiss team’s wheelbase is 3,595 mm, which is only 5 mm less than the maximum allowed by the technical regulations.
The decrease in weight, therefore, is not due to the fact of having a shorter wheelbase, but to the choice of an incredibly light and at the same time very fragile flat bottom.
To combat porpoising, Alfa Romeo focused on several aspects of the C42 : the suspension was raised by 30mm, causing a large loss of downforce, and the underside of the car was also reinforced with carbon plates to prevent the rear from kept yielding towards the asphalt.
The image above, by Giorgio Piola, shows us the solutions that Alfa Romeo has already implemented in Barcelona, for example in the rear of the single-seater. In Hinwil they are preparing to solve these problems definitively in Sakhir, with a fully reinforced flat bottom that will cause the C42 to exceed the current weight limit.
