F1 car understood to be ‘overweight’ ahead of Bahrain GP, worries they could be slower than Haas

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The 2024 Formula 1 season is about to begin, but for Alpine, they’re still worried about an overweight car that’s been left behind by the rest of the midfield.

Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon had a tricky 2023 amid question marks over their relationship and would be hoping to look up the grid rather than over their shoulders.

However, a report from The Race suggests that they may be really struggling heading into Bahrain qualifying on Friday.

Overweight Alpine in trouble in 2024

Pierre Gasly admitted after three days of pre-season testing that he’s struggling to be optimistic about the opening races of the year.

Going into the third season of the current regulations, every team should understand how to take steps forward with their cars.

However, issues with their power unit appear to have hampered them and they’ve had to make huge changes to the 2023 car to aid development this year.

That’s left them on the back foot and even during the livery launch, people were underwhelmed by a car that was more carbon fibre than anything else.

There may be a reason for that if Alpine’s 2024 car is overweight and they’re trying to save every gram possible.

They did appear to add more colour to the day as the three days of testing went on.

But there’s a feeling that they could have gone from regularly challenging for points to struggling to get out of the first qualifying session.

Alpine with work to do this season

The report from The Race admits that the Alpine is ‘understood’ to be overweight and was the second-slowest car through the speed traps.

Their performance going through corners was poor and they were carrying too much drag down the straights.

Ocon and Gasly had to work really hard to keep the car in a straight line and it makes sense that Bruno Famin was tempering expectations from the outset.

While Alpine will be hoping an overweight car doesn’t see them drop too far down the grid in 2024, there’s a suggestion that Haas could even end up ahead of them.

That would be a disaster given their struggles, although they got plenty of miles under their belts during testing.

The French works team will be hoping they can outperform their lowly targets this weekend and beyond.