Franco Colapinto and Pierre Gasly both endured a tough Canadian GP, with strategy and lack of pace costing Alpine valuable points.
Franco Colapinto had hoped to score his first points with Alpine F1 in Montreal, but his tenth-place start turned into a 13th-place finish. He explained he was caught out by strategic games in the midfield.
“We maximized what we could have done, it just didn’t turn in our favor. It was hard to know if we weren’t doing the right thing, but we were doing the wrong things,” said Colapinto.
“Many cars started on hard tires, the guys were slowing the race down for their teammate in front, and I killed the tires after the stop. It was hard to overtake, and it didn’t work out. It was tough today, but we still learned things.”
Frustrated with his race, the Argentine nonetheless insisted he wasn’t unhappy with his weekend: “Yeah yeah, it’s just that when you’re starting to score points, you want to stay there, and we didn’t manage to do that today.”
Gasly Blames Straight-Line Speed for Poor Finish
Pierre Gasly finished 15th after starting from the pit lane, and lamented a lack of top speed that held him back: “The strategy was good since we were starting from the pits, we had to try different things, but what cost us was not being able to overtake on the straights.”
“We were slow and we’ll have to understand why. I spent the whole first stint stuck behind Lawson. We could have done better performance-wise, but starting where we did, we knew we’d be in traffic.”
The Frenchman didn’t want to dwell on the incident with Lance Stroll: “It was tight at the end of the straight but it came down to a few centimeters. It wasn’t a huge mistake, and I expected him to leave me space. I had to go on the grass and cut the chicane, but I don’t want to go further than that.”
“It didn’t change our race. Very clearly, the difficulty overtaking on the straights means we’re quickly on the back foot, and we can’t apply pressure. We’ll try to do better at the next race.”
