Alpine used development tokens on rear of car

Alpine have used their development tokens to work on the rear of their 2021 car, executive director Marcin Budkowski has confirmed.

With regulations remaining largely frozen for the new season, teams were limited when it came to making changes to their machinery. Specifically, they were given two tokens to use on major upgrades.

Alfa Romeo used theirs on the new nose while Aston Martin focused on a new survival cell.

For Alpine, the work can be found at the back of the A521.

“We have spent our tokens at the rear of the car as this is the area we focused on,” Budkowski said, quoted by Crash.

“In terms of the engine, we have delayed the new engine architecture to 2022 as well to go with the new car, so this year’s engine is an evolution of last year’s engine.

“We have been racing against time over the winter to recover as much as possible of this performance, so [there are] a lot of changes at the rear of the car and this is where we focused our attention because that’s where the regulations have impacted it.

“But overall, you work on everything you can redevelop as at the end of the day there’s small gains to be made everywhere and it’s so competitive at the moment that you can’t neglect any part of the car.”

She’s even more beautifully real life.
And that sound…! 🤩#A521Launch pic.twitter.com/tPEMln47Ti

— Alpine F1 Team (@AlpineF1Team) March 3, 2021

Check out the new 2021 collection on the official Formula 1 store!

The travel restrictions put in place have caused issues for a number of teams, with Haas unable to fire up their car as the Ferrari staff cannot travel to their UK base from Italy.

Being based in both France and the UK, Alpine have faced similar issues which have caused delays to the development of their car.

Ultimately though, the team were able to get all of the required personnel to Silverstone for the shakedown.

“It’s the usual logistics issue that everybody’s been experiencing at the border, so that delays the various parts and whether it’s engines or parts going between Viry and Enstone,” Budkowski added.

“The biggest challenge has really been preparing for the fire-up and the shakedown we did on Wednesday because our engineers and technicians from Viry had to quarantine to be able to do the shakedown.

“But as usual, we are getting around these restrictions and it didn’t prevent us from running the car.”

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