Ocon was left stranded in 18th on the Silverstone grid
Esteban Ocon and his Alpine Formula 1 team were wrong-footed by an unusual GPS anomaly at the end of Q1 at Silverstone.
Ocon was convinced that he had passed the timing line before the chequered flag and carried on with what he thought would be his final lap.
However the official GPS system graphics indicated that he had been caught out by the flag, so the team told him to abort the lap.
The GPS system then changed to indicate that he hadn’t got the flag and the official timing screens showed that Fernando Alonso – who was right behind him – was the first driver to pass it.
After abandoning his last lap Ocon was left stranded in 18th place having failed to make it through to Q2. It had already been something of a scrappy session for the Frenchman, who was out of synch with most rivals, and did his big push lap at a time when the track was still damp.
“Basically, prior to that we took all the wrong decisions,” he said when asked about the flag incident by this writer. “We pushed at the wrong moments. We re-charged when the track was driest, and it was clearly not going our way. We’re offset compared to most people.
“At the end, I was sure I didn’t take the chequered flag, so I had an extra lap. So I kept pushing. I was up by a long way at the time.
“And then three corners later [after being told to abort], it was clear on the system that I didn’t cross the line and that I had an extra lap, so I could have gone through. It is very disappointing, obviously, that, we didn’t manage to optimise that session. And, yeah, we need to do better than that for sure.”
Ocon downplayed the suggestion that the team was simply unlucky.
“No, it’s never fully luck,” he said. “There is an element where you plan things ahead, and you look at the information that you have in the right moment. But most of the other teams managed to get through, and it is not an excuse for us. We have been very sharp in the past in these things, and that should not happen now.”
The incident will be of interest to other teams who like Alpine may now realise that the GPS chequered flag signal is not necessarily definitive, and in marginal cases it’s worth telling the driver to press on until it’s absolutely clear that he did get the flag.
Alpine edged towards a wet set-up and higher downforce for qualifying, and if the race looks set to be dry the team has the option take downforce off and to start one or both cars from the pitlane, with Pierre Gasly in 20th thanks to his grid penalty.
“Tomorrow Is it will be a long afternoon, for sure,” said Ocon. “And at the moment, we are not very well optimised for dry running. So hopefully it will rain, but we will see what we do.”
Adam Cooper F1 