Alpine’s worst nightmare came true in qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix as Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly qualified at the back of the field for Saturday’s race.
There had been hints throughout testing that the A524 was off the pace. Friday evening in the Middle East confirmed it.
Speaking after qualifying, Esteban Ocon admitted it’s vital to keep the morale of the team high in these difficult moments.
He referenced the fact Alpine created championship winning cars in the past, including under the Renault name when Fernando Alonso won two consecutive Drivers’ Championships in 2005 and 2006.
“Yeah, it’s super important for sure. I mean, we don’t like the situation as a whole, we’re in this situation, I’m in this situation, no one likes to be at the back. We’re all competitors in this team and it’s very important to be united, to keep the chin up and move forward.
“This team, some years ago, they created a winning car and those ideas were.made in the same places that it is today, Viri and Enstone. So, we can be repeating all these things, and I trust the team to be making a step forward.”
In regard to tomorrow’s race, Ocon is hopeful that Alpine can fight the likes of Williams and Sauber in the race as he expects the team to be slightly stronger in race trim.
“Obviously today, the reality is that we lack pace, especially on short runs.
“We will see tomorrow exactly on a longer run where are. I think we could be closer to the others in that side. So, yeah, let’s see, let’s have a clean race and let’s keep pushing for next week to try and find ideas to optimise more the car.”
Although Alpine is at the back of the field, the gap between themselves and their closest challengers is really tight. While Ocon is fully aware of their main limitation, he says the car is not horrible to drive — it just lacks fundamental speed.
“Yeah, I can feel the limitation, that’s for sure. But you guys could expect that it was horrible to drive or something like this.
It wasn’t.
“I think with the sort of choices and how we’ve progressed through testing and through all the practice sessions, it was OK to drive.
“Unfortunately, yes, there are some areas that are weak, that we don’t manage to fix and that remains an issue, and those are the ones that we are working on.”
For Pierre Gasly, he had similar thoughts to his fellow Frenchman and one-time Grand Prix winner.
However, he wasn’t fully happy with the team on the operational side as the Frenchman had to scurry around on his out-lap to get to the line before the chequered flag was waved.
Ultimately he qualified slowest, 0.155s slower than his teammate, who has generally had the edge throughout the weekend.
“Yeah, I think it’s very clear where we’ve got to make the improvements. Unfortunately, it doesn’t come as a surprise to us that we’re lacking performance.
“Then, yeah, for the time being, we’ve got to make the best out of what we’ve got. So, it’s still a shame because in that last Q1 [run], we didn’t manage the traffic well. Everyone was queuing up and we were the last car on track.
“I ended up pushing flat-out of my out-lap to make it past the line. So, it feels like we could have potentially got a shot at Q2.
“But in the bigger picture, we’re still far away from where we want to be. And we’ll have to be patient until the upgrades are coming.”
In even more concerning news for Gasly, he admitted he is liking confidence in the car and it does not suit the way he likes to attack the race track.
Nonetheless, he’s optimistic things will get better on that side as well when updates come to the A524.
“At the minute I am struggling to get the front that I need in the car and how much of the rotation that I want.
“Obviously when you’re slow generally it never feels really great.
“I’ve been experimenting every single session. At the minute [I am] trying to find if there’s a magic trick that unlocks some potential from now on.
“I haven’t found it, but then I know the upgrades will bring the balance a bit more together and a bit more in the direction that I want. There’ll be progress.”
