It's a scene you rarely see in F1, a driver coming into the pits, but his team is not at all ready to welcome him. However, this is what happened this weekend for Esteban Ocon in Las Vegas.
Esteban Ocon's engineer had instructed his driver to adopt a strategy opposite to that of Nico Hülkenberg. It was therefore quite natural that the Alpine driver dove towards his stand when he saw the Haas driver remaining on the track. Not seeing anyone in his position, Esteban Ocon therefore crossed the pit lane, for nothing, losing precious seconds. Too bad for the French driver who was in a good position to score points at the finish of the Grand Prix.
“For Ocon, there was poor communication in the pits between engineers and mechanics ”, explained Sky Sports’ Ted Kravitz. “When Ocon entered the garage, the mechanics had not been notified and were not in the pits.”
“Ocon was like, 'wow, I'm in, where's my pit crew? It’s a bit weird…”
Read also: Alpine has already lost sixth place overall
“So he went through there and lost 11 seconds of race time, then had to go back through the pits even though the team had been warned that 'Ocon was coming in'.”
“He had to make a stop to put on soft tires at the end, on lap 46, because his tires were worn out. A new set of soft tires was the only one left.”
At the finish of the race, Esteban Ocon did not want to charge his team.
“I think we need to look at exactly what happened”declared Ocon on this subject at the microphone of Canal+. “I'm not exactly sure, I haven't exactly looked at the images… But yes, it's true, we had to make one more stop, unfortunately. It's a shame because I don't think we had bad speed, we were still able to manage the tires well”, concluded the French pilot.
After a double podium in Brazil for Alpine and a third place on the starting grid in Las Vegas for Pierre Gasly, the fall is brutal for the French firm which scores no points in the United States and which sees Haas take back sixth place. of the manufacturers' classification.
Also read: Esteban Ocon will be behind the wheel of the 2024 Haas during post-season testing
