Esteban Ocon gave a small bit of light to Alpine on Saturday at Albert Park as he qualified P15 for the Australian Grand Prix. It’s the first time in 2023 one of them got out of Q1.
He did not want to declare it a mini-victory, however.
“Well, I think let’s not call it a victory, you know, it’s only a P15.
“But obviously, happy that we maximised the potential today, and I feel like it’s the best car since the beginning of the year, that I’ve had in hand since Practice 3. So, we are looking at the right things, we are doing the right understanding and we are placing them on the car.”
Nonetheless, the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix winner was proud of the efforts by the team trackside in Melbourne, even if he’s fully aware how far away they still are from the front and the top of the midfield battle.
“And I think today, I’m proud of the race team, what we have achieved, all that. And it’s a small, I would say, satisfactory thing, in the grand scheme of things, looking at the improvements that we are doing.
“But we still need to look at the bigger picture, obviously, which is, we are still far from the front.”
Ocon hit the wall on the exit of the final corner on his first run, leaving him with a slow puncture as he cruised back to the pits. He was clearly on the limit trying to drag a time out of the A524.
“It’s not for lack of trying, really. We have been pushing hard, pushing the boundaries and yeah, I’ve managed to bring the car with not too much damage, a little bit on the front wing.
“But no, it’s been good to push the limits and to bring the car to Q2.”
After only setting a 1:18.217 on his first attempt on his second set of tyres, the Frenchman found 0.6s on his second push lap to go into 15th. A lap time deletion for Daniel Ricciardo saw him elevated up a spot.
The 27-year-old was a lot happier with the car on Saturday following a tricky Friday.
“Yeah, the car was much better today than it was on Friday.
“And to be honest, we didn’t really change it from FP3 to the qualifying because we thought, ‘OK, that’s the best car we have since the first three races, so, let’s keep it there for qualifying, let’s be safe’, and today has been good.”
A crash between Ocon and Gasly on the final restart in 2023 put paid to Alpine’s race. They were both set for points before the unfortunate tangle on the exit of turn 2.
Ocon is hoping to benefit from some chaos this year as Alpine do not have the car to score points on raw pace.
“Yeah, exactly, that’s the aim [to stay out of trouble]. Last year we were on the wrong side of things, clearly, but this year hopefully we get to the finish and the second thing hopefully, there’s going to be chaos and things to play for.”
Ocon praised his engineers for the work they did behind the scenes on set-up to find small gains and maximise the package they have at present. He said how the car felt in Melbourne was the best it has felt to date this season.
“Set-up work, understanding [it], working in the simulator, working with the engineers, but in the right way. Not letting any little set-up tweaks slip through our hands.
“We work super closely on all the little details and it’s been pretty good.”
On the first lap using his final set of tyres, Pierre Gasly had clocked a time that was just over 0.235s quicker than his teammate. He was in P14 at that point.
Sadly for the 2020 Italian Grand Prix victor, he suffered from downshift issues on his final run, costing him a golden opportunity to make it into Q2.
“I think we had both cars in Q2 today if it wasn’t for the downshifts in the last lap. I couldn’t downshift in turn 1 and turn 6, and until then all the laps were strong.
“So yeah, definitely frustrating, because I think apart from that we executed a strong quali with the package that we have, understanding the tyres etc.
“But the lap that mattered, for some reason we had this issue which we need to fix.”
The C5s proved to be a temperamental beast on Saturday at Albert Park as drivers struggled to get the maximum performance out of it, particularly in FP3.
After saying “no, I think it’s the same as the first weekend” in response to a question about whether the car feels better than Bahrain, Gasly explained how he felt Alpine did a better job than their rivals at getting everything right with the Pirelli soft tyre.
“I just think in these conditions with the tyres we’ve seen a lot of different approaches, prep laps, cool down laps etc., and I just think we did actually a good job on understanding that, and it’s probably the reason why we looked a bit more competitive in Q1.
“So no, it was good apart from that issue which should not happen.”
Rather like teammate Esteban Ocon, the 28-year-old will be banking on chaos to try and get points as he looked ahead to the race.
“I think it’s probably not going to be easy with the tyre degradation, so in terms of strategies there will be more opportunities.
“And we saw from last year a lot can happen in the race — we saw also like F2 and F3 a lot [of incidents]. It’s a tricky track so hopefully we can benefit from any events that happen, and we’ll try our best.”
