Alpine pair of Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon were elated to score points in F1 Spanish GP, but are bit confused about the performance.
It was a strange weekend for Alpine in F1 Spanish GP. They came in hot after another back and forth between drivers Gasly and Ocon due to happenings in Canada and then announced the controversial signing of Flavio Briatore.
But they left Spain with three points in their kitty to move ahead of Haas in the F1 standings when no one expected Alpine to perform that well, leave alone secure a double Q3 and double points – not even their drivers believed it would happen.
Gasly ended up ninth with Ocon 10th after the former ran the lighter chassis in Spain. Even though Red Bull’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Oscar Piastri managed to pass them, it was still a handsome result as they resisted the likes of Haas and Stake F1 Team.
Gasly termed it as the best race of their F1 2024 campaign. “It was the best race of the year for us as a team,” he said. “Very strong qualifying and then strong race. I managed to battle with one McLaren for some laps and also a Red Ball in the end. It was good.
“Definitely need to understand why this track seems to suit the package a lot more than the other race tracks, but I’m very pleased with the team and the directions we’re heading. Straight away after qualifying you’re kind of focused on the race, trying to maximise what we have to do.
“For sure the next three or four days will be important to try to repeat this sort of performance in the coming races. So, it definitely shows at times there is some potential in certain circumstances and conditions, which we need to figure out to be able to repeat it. But it was a strong race, strong faith, and yeah happy for the team,” summed up Gasly, who like everyone else was left confused about their performance.
He wants to understand why Alpine couldn’t perform the same at other places especially when the car has mostly remained the same. “I don’t really understand why this potential wasn’t there in some other places,” said Gasly. “We still need some consistency but consistency is also there.
“The last three races we scored points in Monaco, we scored points in Canada, scored points again in Spain, so we’re finding that consistency. Monaco I knew was a very unique track, Canada was more like mixed conditions where we know in this type of conditions it kind of evens out a bit the performance of the cars.
“And in Spain, we’re just on pure pace we were faster than our competitors so yeah there is definitely a some good news but also some information and answers to get,” summed up Gasly, as Ocon reckoned there was some damage to his car for lack of pace towards the end as the gap between the two teammates was significant.
But he too is a bit surprised by the performance and has some clues about it which he hopes will help them in the upcoming races too. “We saw at the end of the race, there is apparently, some damage,” said Ocon. “They saw a loss in downforce, basically, the team – I don’t know if it’s damage or not.
“We need to investigate if that is the case, if we picked up some debris or something because there was no contact. It was such a quiet race. There was no fighting. I was just falling back the whole time. So yeah, very positive day for us. Because on those kinds of days earlier in the year we would have been last, not inside the points.
“But yeah, clearly the car was super hard to drive, a lot of sliding, a lot of oversteer. And, yeah, not where we wanted to be. To be honest, it never felt great. So I don’t know if from when it was exactly, but there was clearly something that didn’t go right for us this race. We will dig into, some of the differences that we saw and hopefully come up with some answers for Austria.
“Because it’s a tripleheader as well. So yeah, it wasn’t a great one. But it’s funny to say but damage limitation in terms of results. We have some clues. If it’s working in the next three, we should know why it is. But to be honest, it was very unexpected to be that competitive here,” summed up Ocon, who revealed his discussions with Piastri ahead of the race.
The Frenchman told the Australian that he would let him by if he doesn’t do anything silly. “I told him I was going to let him go anyway,” revealed Ocon. “Because he was going to be quicker than us, the whole race. I said don’t try anything silly at the start, I’ll let you go. And yeah, that was not our fight. It was not with him. I thought it was not going to be with Sergio but he was close. So maybe we need to rethink who we’re fighting.”
Here’s how F1 Spanish GP panned out
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