Saturday turned out to be a difficult day for Alpine on the track. The team from Enstone faced a qualifying in Hungary that threatened with rain and left the track slightly damp.
With 6 minutes left in the first session, the competitors headed to their garages as the rain began. The session was interrupted by an accident involving Sergio Pérez that triggered a red flag on the circuit.
By then, Ocon and Gasly were in 10th and 12th respectively, which at that time meant a comfortable passage to Q2. With this in mind, Alpine decided not to go out on the track, trusting that the weather and track conditions would not allow other drivers to improve their lap time as there was not enough time for the asphalt to dry.
They were horribly wrong.
The final classification times showed the Alpine in the last two places on the grid, even outqualified by Sergio Pérez’s Red Bull, who had taken a chunk out of the turn 8 tyre barriers halfway through the session.
Esteban Ocon was annoyed after the session, as he expressed the car’s performance on the track was better than they expected, which shows the opportunity they let go.
“We were tenth when we were on track. We thought we were going to be 17th, 18th, 16th maybe at best, so we were going all in obviously for Q1,” he said.
“We were tenth and 12th so it was better than what we were expecting. We’d done the right job up until then.
“We were going to be able to go through to Q2 but we were not out there when the conditions were at their best, I don’t know what we did wrong but it’s clearly not good enough, especially with the level of car performance that we have.
“The team made the call for both cars to not go out and to save the last set [of soft tyres] that we had for Q2, DRS was disabled, so that’s probably one thing that put the team a little bit out of thinking we’re going to go out and improve,” he explained.
“The call was strict and we didn’t go out, so I trusted the team.
“As a strategy we have in place, an improving track will always be a team call and a track getting worse will always be a driver call.
“[That way of making decisions] has been working every time since 2020, but today it hasn’t worked. I think 12th or 13th would have been possible.
“It’s been two weekends in a row that we do these strategy mistakes. Three years ago we were doing the right ones. It is easy in hindsight,” he acknowledged. “But we win and lose as a team and we did not get it right today. What is most important is to learn and make better decisions in the future.”
Gasly agreed with Ocon’s statements, explaining to the media that Q1 was about being on track at the right time.
“We got that completely wrong today, it was a mistake and, as a result, we missed out,” Gasly said. “When conditions are like that usually opportunities come up and it is these chances that we have to take. Simply, we have to do better.”
Team Principal Bruno Famin apologized to his drivers and admitted that the decision of making the Alpines stay in the garage was a mistake.
“What happened is that we had an interesting opportunity, and we made a big mistake.
“We apologise to the drivers for not giving them the opportunity in the session and we will debrief together and put measures in place to ensure this never happens again.
He explained: “We made a wrong evaluation of the situation. We thought the track, which was damp, would not dry enough to improve the lap times. We were not too bad, ready to go for Q2.
“We wanted to preserve the set of new tyres, and in focusing on that we just forgot the big picture. The big picture was to go into Q2, so yeah, we made a mistake.
“We had one minute to react between the first sector improvement and the possibility to go out and we didn’t use it, the last minute we understood what was going to happen.”
