Brexit caused complications for Alpine
Alpine director Marcin Budkowski has explained how Brexit caused complications for the team as they prepared for 2021.
The French team is one of the few outfits on the grid to have two major bases in two different countries, with work being conducted from both Viry in France and Enstone in England.
With the UK officially leaving the European Union at the start of the year, various restrictions and delays have come into play in terms of trading between the two parties.
Budkowski says that this has posed problems for his team.
“It is complicated. It does create delays. Not only because of our two bases,” he said as per GPFans.
“We have suppliers that are based in Germany, France and Italy and we just need to take a little bit more of a margin on the parts that are critical to run the car than we normally would.
“If it just goes through the border like this, it will get stuck for a few days. F1 teams, we tend to leave everything until the last minute and now we just have to take a little bit more margin.
“It is not the type of thing we are used to doing because we push everything to the limit, but we have to cope with it because otherwise, we are at risk of missing some important elements.”
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Brexit isn’t the only thing that has affected movement between countries, with various travel restrictions being put in place as a result of the pandemic.
Such restrictions meant that Haas were unable to fire up their car prior to pre-season testing as Ferrari staff couldn’t travel from Italy to the UK.
Alpine almost suffered the same fate, but did eventually managed to conduct a shakedown at Silverstone as engineers from their French base were ultimately allowed to enter the UK as long as they quarantined upon arrival.
“The usual logistics issue that everybody has been experiencing at the border if you want,” he said when asked how the pandemic had impacted the team.
“So, that delays the various parts and the engines going between Viry and Enstone.
“The biggest challenge was really preparing for the fire-up and shakedown because the engineers from Viry had to quarantine for the shakedown.”
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