Alpine moved to within three points of Williams in the Constructors’ Championship as Pierre Gasly finished the Mexico City Grand Prix in P10.
The 2020 Italian Grand Prix winner qualified in P8, 0.006s slower than Kevin Magnussen as he ran out of battery before the line.
It was almost over before it started as Alex Albon and Yuki Tsunoda had big contact on the run down to turn 1. The front wing of the Williams made contact with the French driver’s left rear. However, he managed to avoid a puncture.
Alpine team principal Oliver Oakes spoke about the incident afterwards.
“To be honest I actually thought after turn 1, we thought we maybe had a puncture, but we didn’t, so we were quite happy with that first of all. Then he had a good race after that.”
In the opening stint, Gasly could keep up quite well with Nico Hülkenberg on the medium tyre, keeping the gap at around 3s.
However, on the hards, Haas had a big pace advantage, with Kevin Magnussen in P7 finishing over 40s clear of the lead Alpine.
Running the medium-hard strategy paid dividends as the 28-year-old had clean air almost the whole day as he avoided the midfield runners on the alternate strategy.
Oakes discussed it.
“Obviously, it’s not lost on us, it is tricky, those stints in the race, pace-wise you can see it, the Haas is very quick at the minute, but I thought Pierre did a really good job today.
“Especially for us from Austin, where the second stint was a bit of a difficult day. It was nice today to finally maintain that.
“Yes, I don’t know if we were quite fortunate today [with traffic]. The old track a graph, you come in, you go out.
“For us it sort of seemed quite chilled in that respect. Maybe just because of the battles we were in. It was us versus the Haas’ all afternoon.
The Enstone-based team introduced an update in Austin, and it has clearly given the team extra speed. Gasly made it into Q3 at both events, and he got a point last Sunday.
Oakes says it has moved them forward in performance, although the hard tyre stint in the US was disappointing.
“I think, obviously, the upgrade we brought in Austin has been working. There’s a clear lift, Austin and here, particularly, you could say in qualifying, but actually I think it is carrying into the races.
“I think the only tougher bit for us in Austin was the second stint. First stint of the race, we were there, we thought, ‘oh God, this is going to be a good afternoon’. But we did really struggle to fire the hards up.
“But I think today was pretty normal. We are missing a little bit of pace still to the Haas’, but it was strong compared to everyone else.”
It looked like Alpine was in for a very tough weekend as FP3 was a nightmare for the team. They looked slow, with Ocon in P18, and Gasly last on the timesheets.
However, things turned around in qualifying for the driver of car number 10 as various factors came into play on his way to P8, according to Oakes.
Unfortunately for Esteban Ocon, he was out in Q1.
“I think particularly yesterday I saw it first-hand.
“In FP3 we did struggle a bit, even ourselves. We were way out of the window. I think that is definitely hard.
“It isn’t just, I think all the drivers are talking about it at the moment, it’s not even just car set-up. It’s your warm-up, your out-laps.
“There’s a lot that goes into it and it isn’t easy.”
The A524 was the slowest car on the grid when the season started in Bahrain 8 months ago.
While the car has been improved since then, it has still been a tough, tumultuous campaign on and off the track for a former F1 superpower.
Oakes says plenty is needed to be done during the winter break to fix some of the fundamental issues that has held them back in 2024, although progress has been made in other areas.
“We have a few limitations.
“I think everybody knows [at the] beginning of the year we had a bit of a tough launch of the car, and we’re on the back foot.
“But I think actually, particularly since summer break through to now, we’re fixing quite a few issues.
“As I’m realising in F1, it takes a little bit longer than you’d like. So I think January, February, I hope we can fix a few more of those.”
