Alpine on the fringe of a penalty for exhaust system surplus

Alpine has found itself "exposed" to a grid penalty in the second half of the season after exceeding its expected allocation of exhaust systems on its 2021 car.

Teams are allowed to use eight exhaust systems over the course of the season before incurring a grid drop, but unexpected reliability worries have forced Alpine to burn through seven and five components respectively on the cars of Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso.

"We had an issue at the beginning of the year which meant that we limited the mileage of our exhausts to avoid failure during the race," said Alpine executive director Marcin Budkowski in Hungary.

"And so we have introduced a few exhausts at the beginning of the year to contain the risk. We believe we solved this issue now with a spec of exhaust we introduced during the season."

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Alpine can still rely on the used systems in its inventory, but the latter will need to be carefully managed according to Budkowski

"What we're doing now is really managing the pool," he added. "We have a number of exhausts per car for the season, we just need to manage it.

"And effectively you manage them between practice sessions, qualifying, race, by having a bit more resources in your pool you can use them in the most efficient way for the rest of the season.

"So touch wood, we don't expect to take penalties this season. But obviously, as we've used a few more than we would have liked to at the beginning of the season, then we are exposed."

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