Esteban Ocon finished second to last in the Las Vegas Grand Prix after an unnecessary pit stop. The Alpine F1 driver returned but his team was not ready, and he had to return to the pit lane once again at the end of the race.
“I think we need to look at exactly what happened, but unfortunately we had to make an extra stop. It's a shame because we didn't have bad speed, we were arriving good at handling tires” Ocon said.
“But then we tried to be very aggressive and stay on track with just one stop because we were further back than we should have been. We tried everything but it was too much and we should have stopped again at the end. It would have been a different race if we had put everything in order, but we didn't manage it.
Alpine lost sixth place by one point to Haas, and RB F1 is three points behind: “It's going to be complicated, it's going to be tight until the end of the year. Today, we didn't seize the opportunities and we didn't put everything together, they were better and it We need to pull ourselves together.”
Pierre Gasly had high hopes going into the race as he qualified in an impressive third place, but his race was cut short when his A524's engine failed in the first part of the Grand Prix.
“We lost the engine suddenly. We will see in detail what it was, but there was a problem which prevented me from having power, from shifting gears correctly and I had to give up” regrets the Frenchman.
“It hurts my heart because we had a good qualifying yesterday, we were in a good position. We knew the cars around us were faster, but we were going to have a battle with Tsunoda for seventh or eighth that but We couldn’t do it and it’s difficult.”
The degradation of the tires played a key role in the race, especially on the mediums, and this gives additional regrets to Gasly, who thinks that this increased his chances of a good result: “We knew it was going to happen like this and that it could happen quickly.”
“It was the rear tires, in Free Practice it was the front tires. We could have stopped one or two laps earlier but it wouldn't have changed the situation. There were going to be opportunities but we didn't couldn't be in the race.”
Team principal Oliver Oakes also expressed his disappointment after the race: “This is not the result we were hoping for today. A problem with the engine put a premature end to Pierre's efforts.”
“With Esteban, a mistake during his first stop forced him to stop twice. We need to put this weekend behind us. Our pace shown both yesterday and in the race underlines our recent progress and gives us reasons to be optimistic as we approach the last two events of the season.”
Oakes also had a word for the new four-time Formula 1 world champion, Max Versappen: “Congratulations also to Max for this fourth crown, it’s an incredible achievement.”
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