Just not Alpine’s weekend this time around. In fact, Pierre Gasly was forced to retire on lap 1, after a contact with Yuki Tsunoda’s Red Bull. On the other side of the garage, Jack Doohan finished far outside the points in the Saudi Arabian GP.
The Australian didn’t have an easy time adapting to the quick nature of the circuit and wasn’t able to make much of the race after starting in 17th place.
Opting for a bold move, Alpine called him in the pitlane during the Safety car, to switch his tyres from mediums to hards, after only one lap, in hopes of not having to stop again throughout the whole race.
A struggling start to the Saudi Arabian GP
At the restart he got stuck in the middle of a DRS train led by Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin.
“I was trying to get the 0.3 to 0.4 under the start-finish straight and just not enough to get past and just sort of wanted to put a back off, like the 0.8, 0.9, just to maybe let the tyres cool down. It was enough for the car behind me to be a little bit closer.
And, to be honest, even if I was in DRS lane, I was a victim to them,” he told media after the race.
“I was doing everything I can. I felt like through the corners you weren’t too bad and as soon as you got past by one car, then we started to lose our pit window that we wanted to the cars we were targeting. And it was a little bit downhill from there.”
A race strategy that back fired
When the cars on medium compounds started to come back into the pits, he was a sitting duck to Lawson, Bearman and Alonso, who could all easily pass him.
Doohan tried to defend, but being over 20 laps into the race, his tyres were starting to degrade and lose performance to the rest of the contendants.
Ultimately, on lap 32, he had to stop again for a fresh set of tyres and rejoined the race at the back of the order.
Here he had the first real battle with the Stake of another rookie, Gabriel Bortoleto and came 17th on the finish line.
“Me and Gabby [Bortoleto] were speaking to each other earlier. And hopefully very soon we’re having these fights, but in the points and further up and then in the final positions on track,” he commented.
“Just a very tough day, I’m going to keep my head down and focus on the group.”
After a long triple header and a season that unfortunately saw him score no points so far, the break before heading to the US will be an opportunity for Doohan to refocus and recharge for the upcoming weekends.
“We have a nice period now where we can switch off, reset, a couple of days in the simulator before we head to Miami,” he concluded.
