Pierre Gasly scored two points in his first start for Alpine following his switch from AlphaTauri, finishing ninth in the Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix. His teammate Esteban Ocon will want to forget the opening race of the season.
Frenchman Pierre Gasly, who has only worked in F1 for Red Bull and his junior team AlphaTauri, drove a very good race in his debut in Alpine colors.
At the same time, the qualification did not turn out well for him, when he did not even advance from the first part and the sports commissioners deleted his time, so Gasly had to start from the last place.
But he gradually worked his way up the order and made it to the final ninth place.
“I’m happy with my race today and it’s a great start with Alpine. After qualifying yesterday we were all disappointed because we didn’t want to be there, congratulations to the team for a great job,” said Gasly.
“It was difficult to score points today, but we believed in the performance of our race car and knew that with a good strategy we had a chance to score points. We have to keep working hard, we have a good foundation.”
Ocon received three penalties in the race
Esteban Ocon received a total of three penalties in the race. First, the sports commissioners punished him with a five-second penalty for not standing correctly in his starting position at the start.
The Frenchman pointed out after the race that he was not the only one who broke the rules at the start, but was the only one penalized.
“The four cars were also further forward. I wasn’t the only one out of line. I was the most in front, that’s obvious, but I wasn’t the only one,” says Ocon.
The second penalty came for his mechanics starting work on the car 0.4 seconds before he served his five-second penalty during the first pit stop. Ocon received a 10-second penalty for this.
And to make matters worse, Ocon damaged his front wing in the race. Heading into the pits, Ocon was fouled for the third time. He exceeded the speed limit in the pit lane by 0.1 km/h and received another five-second penalty.
“I don’t know where the speed came from. For five years I’ve been entering and exiting the pits the same way, I’ve never received a penalty,” he added.
Ocon finally withdrew from the race 16 laps before the finish line.
