Mixed Results for Alpine: Ocon Up Gasly Down

Alpine F1 sees contrasting fortunes: Ocon advances to Q3 while Gasly faces setbacks despite showing potential.

Esteban Ocon secured an impressive result for Alpine F1 at Spa-Francorchamps. He reached Q3 and will start ninth on the grid following Max Verstappen’s penalty, a result that genuinely pleased him.

“We will start tomorrow’s race from ninth place, after qualifying tenth and making it through to Q3. We’ve made some improvements here at Spa, and we’ll continue to collect data each time we hit the track. It was a good afternoon and we maximized our potential during qualifying,” Ocon noted.

“The weather conditions didn’t make things easy in the wet, but we managed to run without issues. In Q3, it was more challenging as we didn’t have a new set of tyres. We’re starting in the points on Sunday, we know it won’t be an easy race, but we’ve given ourselves a great chance to score points.”

Even without the rain, he hopes to optimize his race tomorrow: “We need to look ahead to tomorrow, assess the conditions, which will likely be dry, and evaluate our strategic options. We intend to seize every opportunity that comes our way.”

Pierre Gasly appeared to be on pace with his teammate but poor preparation cost him dearly: “It’s really disappointing to go out in Q2, especially after a strong Q1 where we finished second on the timesheet.”

“We didn’t optimize our laps and tyre preparation in the changing conditions and I felt a lack of rear grip. We didn’t put all the chances on our side to reach Q3 and we need to better understand how to maximize our performance.”

“My settings are different from the other car; they focus on cornering and compromise a bit on straight-line speed, so we’ll see how it works out in tomorrow’s race. It looks like it will be dry; we tried some things in the dry during Friday’s practice, so I hope it pays off tomorrow, where we aim to get into the points.”