Alpin had a decent starting position before the race, with Pierre Gasly in tenth and Esteban Ocon in eleventh, but after half a lap their points scoring possibilities were halved when Ocon tried an optimistic pass on Gasly, but left his teammate too little space on the exit of Portier, resulting in his car almost being flipped.
The Alpine 524 did not survive the landing, and despite the red flag for the Pérez/Magnussen-incident Ocon had to retire. Suffice to say teamboss Bruno Famin was not pleased.
“It’s sad, this kind of incident. It’s exactly what we didn’t want to see,” he said, and added that it was Ocon’s opportunistic move he considered “totally” inappropriate.
“And there will be the appropriate consequences,” suggesting they would be swift and significant.
The culprit, Esteban Ocon, had “no comment”, and added that he “didn’t really review so couldn’t answer.”
He later issues a more apologetic statement on X, formerly known as Twitter:
“Today’s incident was my fault, the gap was too small in the end and I apologise to the team on this one. Hoping for a deserved points-finish for the team today.”
Points did come eventually, or one to be precise, as Pierre Gasly came home tenth. He “was quite shocked” however, that Ocon attempted the overtake in such manner.
“It was very unnecessary; you should never have such a situation, especially between team-mates. Just sad. Disappointed with the situation.
“Especially, we had clear instructions before the race on what to do, and whoever qualified ahead, the trailing car was supposed to help throughout the race.”
“That was the strategy. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen,” the Frenchman said with a sense of understatement.
“We definitely need to speak because we can’t afford [it] – especially in a season like that. At that time, we’re P9 and P10, so there’s absolutely no reason to risk to get both cars out.”
And with only only one point for the team coming into this weekend, such a cautious approach makes sense.
“We came a couple of centimetres from having both cars in the wall,” Gasly added. “You just know what do to and what not to do – even more with your team-mate.
“He’s a very good driver, he knows what he does, so he just needs to make a change.”
