Esteban Ocon was seen helping Jack Doohan to get out of the car in parc ferme after F1 Japanese GP, as Oliver Bearman reckons he is not sensitive to bouncing.
Away from the world feed, it was noted post-race in F1 Japanese GP that Alpine’s Doohan needed some help from Haas’ Ocon to get out of the car in parc ferme. It was spotted by fans on social media using the Australian car’s onboard camera, which showed him in some discomfort while leaving the car. He didn’t say much about pain on the radio.
After his heavy FP2 crash, he was shown holding his left hand, which was same after the race too. He was cleared by the doctors to continue and also passed the extraction test. But soreness and tiredness hurt him in the course of the grand prix. The aggressive strategy and defence in the final stint only made things trickier for Doohan to manage.
He did gain places to be 15th in a grand prix where not many made places. His teammate Pierre Gasly didn’t score either as Alpine remains the only team to not score so far. Away from Japan, it surfaced that Paul Aron and Franco Colapinto undertook TPC run in Monza over the weekend.
“I think the strategy was aggressive,” said Doohan to media. “It gave us the best opportunity to move forward, however, I don’t think it was the best strategy for overall race time, lets say. We were able to execute the undercut, which was great, however, with 25 lap to go we were in a bit of a tricky situation when it came to tyre life because I pushed like a dog from coming out of the box.
“It is not where I want to finish all in all but if you take into account, it was kind of stalemate race for most, so for us to execute something, obviously Lance boxed from behind a few laps earlier on the same strategy, we were able to execute that, as you can see from his view that maybe it wasn’t a mega strategy but we were able to at least make the most of it.
“I had a good experience from that after China, so it wasn’t anything new to me of being harassed for the last 25 laps of the race. It’s just all good experience for me as well, good learning. I wasn’t able to keep Carlos behind on the new soft tyre, which was a bit of a bummer, but all in all, to keep Hulk, Lawson, I think Ocon… I think those are the three cars that I undercut.
“We have to be content with that. In the end, we can’t be too unhappy. I went in a bit dark into this session with no high fuel running at all. We were able to move forward in a race like today; we’re just going to keep our heads high, keep pushing and try to bounce back and get some points in Bahrain,” summed up Doohan, as Ocon summed up his disappointing out as well.
Despite the new floor to combat the high-speed issue, he didn’t sync well all-through the weekend. “We were waiting for safety car to come out, that was the whole plan behind that strategy and as the safety car didn’t come, the strategy was not the optimal one. There was nothing really that we could have gained otherwise, we tried it and yeah, we just have to improve the pace.
“This weekend has been difficult for us. No [I was not comfortable with the floor]. We are still lacking four to five tenths,” summed up Ocon, whose teammate Bearman did score one point. The Brit looked far better than his counterpart in the car and had a more complete weekend. He reckons it is down to him being used to bouncing cars in F2, which is not affecting him as much in F1 thus far.
“It was pretty boring, I was pretty lonely out there, bit spooky. But it was a fun race, the temperature dropping like it did and the track kind of resetting overnight with the rain, the grip was incredibly high and the level of pushing was also incredibly high,” said Bearman to media. “The tyres were pretty robust and it was basically just a flat out race, I didn’t have quite enough to attack and wasn’t slow enough to be attacked, it was a bit lonely.
“For me it seems positive, so I am happy with it. The team has done a great job by bringing it so quickly after the upset in Australia, I think we did a great reaction and it worked as expected, so there’s a good feeling. Lets see how it performs in the rest of the tracks we have.
“For me, we had a little less bouncing in the high-speed corners which anyway I am not super sensitive to with or without the floor. I don’t complain that much about bouncing, I am used to F2 which doesn’t have suspension essentially. The floor has definitely improved the bouncing, it doesn’t really change the feeling to us but it allows to run the car a bit more aggressively and get a bit of performance out of it which is good.
“Overall, every weekend I’ve done so far has had a mistake somewhere, maybe not China. But this one, completing the full weekend without any bad points, good qualifying, good race, I’m happy with this one, and it’s a good baseline to improve from. This weekend, I felt really confident to push and lean on it and, if I have that feeling, I hope we can be that competitive in the future races too.”
Here’s news on Ryo Hirakawa leaving Alpine for Haas
Here’s how F1 Japanese GP panned out
