Ocon and Gasly had a costly contact in the F1 race in Japan

The Japanese Grand Prix proved to be another difficult F1 weekend for embattled Alpine.

In recent months, the French establishment has experienced earthquake after wave, causing more or less incomprehensible personnel changes and increasing levels of internal confusion. However, if you look closely, you can see that one thing has remained constant in the team – the magnetic attraction of the cars of Gasly and Ocon.

Despite Ocon’s good performance in qualifying, no one expected that the race at the Suzuka circuit would bring an interesting result for the Alpine drivers. As it turned out, this expectation was confirmed when the race resumed, it was interrupted after a collision between Daniel Ricciardo and Alex Albon.

– Today’s race was not easy – said Esteban Ocon. – We got damage early and then tried different strategic options to have any chance to respond. Ultimately, however, we were not quick enough today to compete with our opponents and put them behind after the restart.

– It’s a pity that I damaged my car, but I don’t think that the damage would have had any important consequences for the overall picture of the race. We had a race pace problem and we need to look at it carefully. I hope that we will come back to Shanghai stronger.

Pierre Gasly explained the impact of the damage on the performance of the car in a slightly different way, showing great confusion.

– At first I managed to develop three positions. The reboot was pretty cool too. I managed to pass Esteban and catch up with Yuki, but I ran into a sandwich. Yuki went left, Esteban went right and unfortunately they touched me, removing the left side of the floor, so I lost almost 30 pressure points. That was the very end…

– I was hoping that the red flag would be shown again and we would be able to replace the damaged parts. Unfortunately, all of this cost us dearly. It was a long and hard afternoon.

The drivers’ comments were confirmed by Bruno Famin, team leader.

– Our race was dominated by damage to both cars from a race incident after the restart. Both cars suffered significant underpowered losses, which affected performance and lap times. However, we are still not up to speed and we need to improve in all areas and make further improvements.