The weight of Formula 1 cars has been a hot topic in recent years as they have gradually increased over the course of the last couple of years. In 2023 the minimum weight will increase to 798kg from 796kg, the extra 2kg mainly due to the heavier Pirelli tyres which will have stronger sidewalls . Alpine has admitted that it has managed to engineer a weight advantage for the A523, with Technical Director Matt Harman explaining how this impacts their performance. "We would've been happy with a 796kg weight limit," he told media, including RacingNews365.com . "But the good thing is that we can very quickly spend it [remaining weight] back into performance. So we've got ideas, we've got a lot of things that we can do with the car that will allow us to spend that mass."
Harman: Important to not be where we were last year
Harman continued to say that it is important for the team not to be where it was last year in terms of weight, because it can limit what solutions you can implement on the car at the track. "I think it's just really important not to be where we were last year, because it does limit what we can do at the circuit and what we can do on weight distribution," he said. "It limits what toys we can put on the car to help us with the mechanical balance and things like that." It also gives Alpine more freedom to introduce upgrades throughout the season which may add weight to the car, but in turn give a trade off for performance. "It allows you to get parts to the car more quickly because you don't need to engineer them to that [weight] level, but also allows you to accept a little bit of modularity in the car as well," he explained. "You can accept a little bit more of a 'sub optimal' configuration, but to allow you to update things more quickly because you have better split lines, better interfaces between floors on bodywork. "So you can spend that mass for modularity, which fundamentally is performance."
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