With Esteban Ocon in eighth place and Pierre Gasly in ninth place on the grid for this sprint, Alpine could believe in its chances of picking up a few more points in the constructors’ standings. Unfortunately, the two Enstone drivers were knocked out of the top 8 in the first few hundred metres of the race and did not have the weapons to respond afterwards.
Not really a surprise for Ocon, 11th at the finish this Saturday, who believes that it would have been difficult in any case to pretend to play with the Red Bull of Sergio Pérez and keep the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc behind. “We have a little trouble in a straight line”he declared on Canal+ after the sprint, while explaining that the puncture suffered the day before in qualifying had forced him to start with medium tires that were more worn than expected.
“We also had worn tires on our side, more worn than normal, with the puncture we had yesterday after qualifying. It didn’t necessarily help us with the pace during the race, but we wouldn’t have scored points anyway Charles was too fast, and the other cars could have finished in front of Lance. [Stroll, dixième à l’arrivée] I think so, but that’s about it. Let’s see this afternoon when we manage to qualify.”
As for Gasly, who finished 12th, he regrets a missed start which quickly relegated him to the position in which he completed the 23 laps of the race. “My start was bad, so we’ll have to improve that for tomorrow, it’s not the first time”he explained, also for Canal+. “At the start of the year we were really strong but in the last two or three races we had a lot of skating at the start, so we’re going to have to review that because I’m losing all the places at that point.”
“Afterwards unfortunately, in the race it was just a DRS train, we had the engine which was overheating so we had to manage it and with the speed in a straight line that we had it was not possible to overtake. There are some things to improve, we are not far from the top 10 for tomorrow so we will be able to score points, but there are things to improve for tomorrow.”
