Alpine’s performance at the Spanish Grand Prix was a surprise to everyone, including the team themselves. They added another three points to their total on Sunday, passing Haas for P7 in the Constructors’ Championship.
The Enstone-based team had a tricky day at Montmeló. While Gasly faced a pit stop of almost 7 seconds and losing eighth position on the last lap against the Red Bull of Sergio Pérez in the process, Esteban Ocon said that the car was “super hard to drive”. Nonetheless, he managed to fend off Nico Hülkenberg in the final stint to secure P10.
Ocon says Alpine saw his A524 had some performance loss during the race, explaining why he was a step behind Gasly through each stint.
“We saw at the end of the race there is apparently some damage, suspected damage, the team saw a loss in downforce basically. I don’t know if it’s damage or not, we need to investigate if that is the case, but we picked up some debris or something, because there was no contact.
“It was such a quiet race, there was no fighting, I was just falling back the whole time.”
Although pleased that a ‘bad’ day was a P10 in Barcelona, the car was very difficult to drive for the 27-year-old. He says it’s vital they understand the differences between the cars with two more races to come in the triple-header.
“A very positive day for us, because on those kind of days, earlier in the year, we would have been last, not inside the points.
“But clearly the car was super hard to drive, a lot of sliding, a lot of oversteer and not where we wanted it to be.
“There is clearly something that didn’t go right for us this race. We will dig into some of the differences that we saw, and hopefully come up with some answers for next week, because it’s a triple-header as well.
“We have some clues, I think if it’s working in the next three races, we should know where it is.
“But to be honest, it was very unexpected, to be that competitive here. And yeah, that’s still something that we need to make sure we review.”
Ocon lost out to Piastri and Perez who started behind him on the grid. He says they were not his fight as they were comfortably faster.
But after finishing just over 10s behind Sergio Perez, he says those tactics might need to be reviewed next time.
“I told him [Piastri] I was going to let him go anyway, because he was going to be quicker than us the whole race. I said, ‘don’t try anything silly at the start, I’ll let you go afterwards.’ It’s not with him.
“I thought it was not going to be with Sergio either, but he was close, so, maybe we need to rethink who we are fighting next.”
