Ocon and Gasly swapped places with a lap to go in Montreal
Pierre Gasly says the delay in getting past his Alpine Formula 1 team mate Esteban Ocon at the end of the Canadian GP was “no big deal” despite it potentially costing him a place.
In the closing laps Ocon and Gasly were running ninth and 10th, with the former suffering with a power unit issue.
Ocon was asked to let Gasly past in order to have a shot at Daniel Ricciardo in front. He initially declined to do so, saying “forget it” on the team radio.
Eventually he moved over at the end of the penultimate lap, making it clear that he expected the positions to be reversed if Gasly couldn’t pass Ricciardo.
However it was too late for Gasly to challenge the VCARB driver, and then he team opted not to switch the positions back at the final corner, much to Ocon’s obvious frustration.
“I think today I’ve done my part of the job,” Ocon said after the flag. “I don’t think the team did their part of the job. I’ve been a team player, and I’ve always respected the instructions that I’ve been given, always. It’s always been the case, I showed it once more today.
“But yeah, the nice guy doesn’t always pay off in F1, and that is that is bothering me a lot. I hope things will turn around for me.”
The ninth and 10th place finishes still represented the Enstone team’s best performance of the season to date.
“First of all I think the main news should be that we scored points with both cars,” said Gasly when asked by this writer about the team order discussion.
“And looking at all the simulation this morning, none of them looked that it will be achievable. So definitely a very positive day for the team.
“The target was quite clear at the end, I was faster on the hard tyre towards the end of the race, and I was right behind Daniel, and as soon as Daniel overtook Esteban, the goal was for the other car to let me pass, and for the last four laps to try to overtake Daniel with the DRS. It took slightly more time than we would have liked. But honestly, it’s no big deal.”
Regarding the timing of Ocon letting him by he added: “What’s tricky is these two laps is just enough for Daniel to break the DRS, and then when you do it two laps at the end, it’s, it’s too far away than it would have been done slightly earlier – I mean the DRS, and you get slightly more chances.
“But honestly, it’s no big deal. I still think we did a great teamwork today. We tried different stuff, we stayed out on the inter, I boxed, I put the hard tyres, we got some good data.
“I think it was a very good day for the whole team, and to come out with these three points could be very valuable at the end of the year.”
Gasly admitted he was fortunate to survive a heavy nudge from Sergio Perez at the exit of the second corner on the first lap.
“I definitely thought that this will be it. And on a day like today, you just want to see the chequered flag. I haven’t really seen what’s happened. Visibility was extremely poor.
“All I felt is suddenly I was sideways, and I lost all the positions, we were almost lost by that time. And that’s why when I made the call to go on hard, I knew that it was touch and go, and when I came out of the pits it was very, very tough to stay on track.”
Gasly was the first driver to pit for slicks, although he nearly went off as he exited the pits.
“I couldn’t even turn!”, he said. “I was full lock, and the car was just even, like, first gear, just not turning. But then I was trying to get to the dry bit to get some grip. And I think looking back, it was a lap too early.
“But I knew I had to try it, because if I wanted to have a potential gain, then it was definitely worth the risk. And then after that, I actually managed to overtake a lot of cars. I built up some temperature, and managed to get by quite a lot of guys.
“So it was quite pleasant compared to last week [Monaco], where you’ve seen the same rear wing for the entire race. At least this weekend, it felt like there was quite a lot of action, and it was quite enjoyable.”
He added: “I think there was a lot of putting the wheels in the right place. And sometimes you could see that there was a different approach. And it was very fun, because it felt like karting days, where your line is not the ideal line, sometimes you’re all over the kerb.
“But then if it means your outside tyre on the dry bit, then you get extra grip. It was very fun, as the track was drying, just trying to figure out where the best grip is. And I think we did well in these conditions.
“I think the pace was looking pretty strong in the last few laps, the sort of normal pace, kind of everything got closer to the normal order of qualifying. But it was quite enjoyable condition.”
Gasly admits that Alpine still has much to do to improve the A524 and has to make the most of any chances that come.
“At the end of the day it was good teamwork,” he said. “That’s what we need until the end of the year, because we know Williams seems to have a competitive car, looking at the qualifying they had yesterday, it was quite impressive. Haas seems to have some good pace at times.
“And we know on days like today, we’ve got to make the best out of what we have, and we can’t afford to do any mistakes, and we can’t afford to take any unnecessary risk. So it was well-managed, and hopefully we’re going to continue like that until the end of the year.
“We won’t have any upgrades in the near future. We know the target is to have something a bit more significant at some stage in the year. I expect the next few races to be quite hard if its normal conditions, but this is F1, and you always have chances at times.
“So that’s why we’ve got to make sure we stay on top of it, and until we have the upgrades, just try to grab any opportunities that may arise.”
Adam Cooper F1 