Otmar Szafnauer says Pierre Gasly and his Alpine engineering team held a meeting post the events in Barcelona qualifying.
A double impeding in F1 Spanish GP qualifying left Gasly with a six-place grid penalty which dropped him from a respectable fourth to 10th on the starting grid. It was hard for the Alpine driver to then claw back with the pace similar around him.
He finished 10th but it was only possible after AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda was penalised. The qualifying penalty undone Gasly’s effort in Barcelona and it eventually required a meet to sort out the communication as Alpine team principal Szafnauer revealed.
“We met in between Spain and here with Pierre and his engineering team,” said Szafnauer. “We met for about an hour and a half to discuss communication strategy, how we communicate with him, the information that he needs, the timing of the information that he gets, what he does with that information, just so we can get a little bit better, because it was unfortunate.
“Had he actually started fourth and ran fourth instead of starting where he did and then being pushed wide and ended up 14th after lap one, it’s significantly different than running 14th than running fourth. So we have to make sure that when we qualify that high, we can actually race there and we will do some things differently and especially on Pierre’s side.
“Esteban’s more used to his engineering team because he’s been with us for a lot longer,” summed up the Alpine chief, as Gasly also affirmed of the meet to improve communication between him and his side of F1 team.
“I think it had a very bad impact, obviously, on our weekend, from Qualifying, for us to start P10 and drop to P14 on lap one, so it was definitely a pretty terrible start,” said Gasly. “But yeah, there are always things we can do better. There were small mistakes, which were done in Quali, which we reviewed and will improve in terms of procedure and communication. And yeah, it was a harsh penalty. Unfortunately, there is a regulation, which is applied most of the time and then we paid a pretty big price.”
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