Esteban Ocon was surprised by the F1 Bahrain GP issues, while McLaren notes about the double trouble they faced.
It wasn’t the start that Alpine’s Ocon hoped for in F1 Bahrain GP after starting in the Top 10 when his teammate Pierre Gasly was last. The former’s first hit was a 5s time penalty for being out of position on the starting grid post the formation lap.
F1 TV’s Sam Collins pointed out that Ocon placed his car slightly to the right on the white spotter. In fact, when seen from the front (in picture below), the Frenchman’s right wheel is visible along with the front wing endplate which the FIA stewards caught as well.
During and post race, Ocon insisted of doing it multiple times before while adding that there were other cars as well. Eventually, it was only the start of a disastrous grand prix for him, as when he came in to serve the penalty, the team made another mistake.
As per the FIA, a mechanic started to work on the car after 4.6s were passed, thereby not fulfilling the full 5s penalty. He was handed another 10s time penalty and while serving this, he was handed another 5s penalty for speeding in the pitlane by 0.01 km/hr.
Amid this his left front wing endplate went missing after a contact with Lando Norris which required a pit stop too. This left him at the back of the pack whereas teammate Gasly went from back of the pack to ninth in a superb outing.
Ocon was certainly frustrated by the situation. “Quite impressive how it was not our day,” he said to media. “We are usually quite good on these operational things. Pit stopping, stopping at the right places, and these are things that we put a lot of effort on, so everything went wrong today for sure.
“It has never gone like that in the past ever, so I’m a bit surprised to see that this happened. But we will analyse and come back stronger from it. We were on course to score those points. We were on the way to do it. It’s a missed opportunity, but that’s how it is,” summed up Ocon.
While the Frenchman had his own disasters, he was joined by the McLaren pair. Newcomer Oscar Piastri’s day ended early due to a steering column issue rather than a steering wheel trouble, which they tried changing in the pits but found out a larger situation.
“The steering wheel change didn’t fix the problem because the electronic damage is further down the line around the steering column,” said team principal Andrea Stella to media. “The steering wheel wasn’t the problem. It was a problem with the harness probably. We are investigating. Not fixable in a short time [during a pit stop].”
Teammate Norris faced a pneumatic pressure leak on the power unit which required refill after every 10-12 laps to continue in the grand prix. This is the reason for the Brit’s six pit stops and finishing two laps behind Max Verstappen and rest of the field.
“There was a pneumatic pressure leak on Lando’s car,” said Stella. “We discovered this leak relatively soon in the race. And then we knew that it was possible only to do 10, 11 laps each time before having to refill. So we decided to stay in the race, we decided to try and stay at least within one lap from the leader within the last 10 laps.
“Then if there’s a safety car, try and see if there was an opportunity. We did six stops,” summed up Stella, who reckons the pace was good enough to fight for Top 10. Norris too was not in much of a mood as post-race, he remained silent on radio and quickly pitted – going at almost race pace – even before the Top 3 entered parc ferme.
Here’s how F1 Bahrain GP panned out
