Alpino con aggiornamenti più lenti rispetto a prima

(Motorsport-Total.com) – Esteban Ocon had already feared it in advance: A lot of fine-tuning would be needed, said the Frenchman with a view to Alpine’s updates, “but we actually have hardly any time for that” – especially not on a sprint weekend.

And so it happened after just one practice session in the sprint qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix somehow as it had to: Ocon ended up just behind teammate Pierre Gasly with the “new” Alpine, who had the “old” one. Just a reminder: Gasly is in Shanghai without updates because the team prioritized the new parts due to the current form crisis, but they only had enough for one car.

Unsurprisingly, Ocon says after finishing 17th in the sprint qualifying: “Unfortunately, I don’t feel that we fully utilized the potential of the car today. Probably for the first time this year, because I believe there was more to come today.” At least these words can give the Alpine technicians some hope that the new underbody is not worse than the old one.

Ocon: “Unfortunately, we just couldn’t put everything together today, with only one session before. The good thing is that parc fermé opens again, so we can make changes to the car before the next qualifying.”

The Frenchman then wants to “change quite a bit” and hopes: “With a different set-up, we will see what we can achieve. It’s definitely worth a try.”

Gasly: ERS problem right from the start

Meanwhile, despite winning the internal duel, teammate Gasly is not really happy, especially since Friday did not go smoothly for him: “We had a problem with the energy recovery system this morning, so I could only do three laps.”

Gasly: “We all know how important it is to get things right from the start on sprint weekends.” However, his mechanics were able to fix the defect for the afternoon session: “That was good and I am very satisfied with the lap I could do in qualifying. It was a bit better than we expected.”

However, Gasly still missed out on making it to SQ2. This also came as no surprise to the Frenchman: “To be honest, it’s quite difficult for me this weekend without the improved chassis and underbody.” Nevertheless, the Alpine driver has hope: “I will get these parts in Miami and they should get us into Q2 – and maybe even a bit further into the points.”

Gasly doesn’t hide the fact that the season start for Alpine has been forgettable so far: “We’ve always had problems, actually in every session. That’s why it was a shame that we didn’t have a clean weekend from start to finish again this morning.”

“But at least the qualifying was really good, I gave it my all,” believes the Frenchman. “We just have to keep working because we know where we stand. We need to improve, and that’s our main focus.”