Alpine's 2024 car no longer overweight

May 16 (GMM) Alpine’s push to emerge from a deep performance collapse in Formula 1 will take a brief pause as the sport returns to Europe.

Many teams will unveil significant car upgrades for the first race of 2024 on the continent – including Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes, Aston Martin and others.

“In the last two races, we have been able to unlock some performance courtesy of our upgrades,” Alpine boss Bruno Famin said this week.

One of the biggest breakthroughs for the Renault-linked team has been successfully getting its badly overweight new car down to the minimum weight limit – having initially been more than 10kg over that limit.

Famin announced: “We will not be bringing any significant upgrades over the next few races, but we keep pushing hard at the factories to improve the car and extract more performance.”

Those efforts are also continuing on the track, with De Zandvoortse Courant newspaper reporting that reserve driver Jack Doohan did a two-day test at the Dutch GP venue on Tuesday and Wednesday in a 2022 car.