The team instructions imposed in Montreal went very badly for Esteban Ocon, frustrated at having had to give up ninth place to his teammate Pierre Gasly, yet another episode in a stormy relationship…
So the team ordered him to let Gasly pass at the end of the race while the two Alpines had entered the top 10, Ocon does not understand the reasons.
He had come back from last place to ninth and he did not hold back from expressing his anger.
“I played my part of the job which is to respect the team instructions, as I have always done, but the opposite is not true, Esteban ruminated. We see the trend that will emerge until the end of the year, it’s not correct, no respect. I did my job, not the team, and it’s sad that this race ended like this.”
“I’m happy that we scored the points as a team but we would have scored the same in both cases, he pointed out. We will discuss it internally as usual, but I have no illusions…”
For his part, Gasly understands Alpine’s instructions, believing that it came too late: “The goal was to attack Ricciardo, we would have wanted to change positions two laps earlier with four laps to go, to be closer.”
“It’s not serious, he concluded. For the team it was clear that with the hard tires I had a better chance of attacking Daniel. But given the start of the season, we can be satisfied with scoring these three points and we worked well as a team.”
