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Gasly says he was “sacrificed” to help out Ocon

Pierre Gasly was left frustrated at the Singapore GP after being “sacrificed” to help the race of Alpine Formula 1 team mate Esteban Ocon.

Ocon started 15^th with Gasly three places behind him on the grid. After Ocon pitted on lap 29 Gasly stayed out on track in an effort to hold up other cars and allow Ocon to jump them.

When he came in on lap 37 he was given soft tyres for the 25-lap run to the flag, and he’d fallen behind some of the cars that he’d been racing earlier.

Gasly eventually finished 17th, beating only Daniel Ricciardo after the Aussie made three stops, while Ocon was 13th.

“Today, I got sacrificed, left out on track to block the others and try to help Esteban to catch up,” he said when asked by this writer about his race.

“Fundamentally, we are just too slow, and it forces us to try some interesting strategies.

“When you’re lapping five second off the pace the last 10 laps, not much point. But I understand we try to help one car in a way, because we are obviously not able to fight on pure pace for the top 10.”

Asked if he was surprised to be given soft tyres at his stop he said: “I was just surprised to be in the first place to be left out like that. I think, obviously I started out of position, made my way back, I think we were running three or four seconds behind Esteban.

“And then after I’ve been left out for another 15-20 laps when everybody around me was just overtaking right, left.

“There’s not much to do on afternoon like that, but I obviously, hoped that we will be able to do slightly more than just use me for blocking the others.”

Like its rivals Alpine still has an update package coming, although the team has yet to confirm that the new parts will make it to Austin.

“It’s going to be a step when we have some more upgrades,” said Gasly. “But at the moment, we just need to look at the delta.

“Three races ago I finished ninth in Zandvoort. The last three races, we’ve been absolutely nowhere. So I think we got to be objective about what we do. We got to review what we have in our hands.

“We are clearly the ninth fastest car at the moment. I think there are just the Saubers behind us, and the gap with the guys with the guys ahead is just growing weekend after weekend.

“So we do need some new parts to come, which is going to come. And I know we got the team and actually the people to make the right steps. It’s just at the moment it’s coming too slowly, and season is almost coming to an end.

“Next year’s car is going to be very different. Got to maximise what we have, but on a day like today, we probably maximised what we could do on one car, and on my side, it was just a compromise from the moment we decided to leave me out on track.”

Gasly stressed that the team has to make significant progress: “This year it’s 13 points. Since January, we’ve been telling that the car was completely out of the window.

“We’ve managed at times to get a P9/P10, but then we need next year to clearly make a big step forward, not even in the midfield, the goal was to try to get close to the top three.

“We drifted away from the midfield and drifted back, actually, so just need to make sure we put ourselves in a much better position.”

Leclerc did well to recover to fifth place but fourth was within reach

Charles Leclerc says he “loved” the second part of a Singapore GP that saw him charge to fifth place from ninth on the grid after his frustrating Q3 session.

However he didn’t enjoy the first part, when he got caught behind Nico Hulkenberg and Fernando Alonso, and lost a lot of time.

After they pitted and he had a clear track Leclerc eventually made a late stop for the hard tyre.

With fresher rubber than those ahead he was able to pass Alonso, Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton, before closing up on George Russell in the final laps. However he couldn’t get past the latter and had to settle for fifth.

“Yeah, I did,” he said when asked by this writer if he’d enjoyed the race. “From the end of the first stint to the last laps, I loved it. The first 25 laps were a nightmare, because I was just a sitting duck behind Fernando and Nico.

“And I was just hoping that they had to box very soon because of [the cars] behind, but it never really happened, and they went very long. And I just had to wait.

“But overall, it’s been a good race from that moment onwards. As soon as they pitted, we maximised our points. We just paid a little bit price of a bad quali yesterday.”

At one point during the race Leclerc mentioned his brakes on the radio: “That was a concern. I mean, not a concern, but that was something we had to manage, and we knew it before the weekend.

“I think everybody on the grid had to manage the brakes, so we weren’t the only ones. This was a little bit tricky, but we did a good job on that.”

Asked if the weekend represented a missed opportunity given Ferrari’s strengths on street tracks Leclerc acknowledged that the opposition was also strong.

“I would say yes, but looking back at the pace of the McLaren, and of Max, I’m not sure how many points have we missed today,” he said.

“George definitely, I think we had the car in order to finish in front. I didn’t check again the pace of everybody, but what I’ve heard about Lando’s pace, I don’t think we quite had that in the car, and I don’t know where the others were behind him.

“So a few points lost. I think it was a good recovery today. But again, we paid the price of price of a bad quali. It will happen that I do mistakes on the Saturday, and I’ll have good qualifying also sometimes. But today I paid a little bit of a bad Saturday.”

Leclerc had complained after Q3 that his tyres were too cold coming out of the pits, but he decided to moderate those comments.

“Actually I would like also to come back on things I said yesterday,” he noted. “I obviously said the tyres were not in the right window, which they weren’t.

“But looking back at it, there’s been plenty of times where you had the tyres a bit out of the window, and you still have to do the job as a driver.

“And eventually I didn’t do the job as a driver yesterday. So I think the blame was more on my side yesterday in quali to not put a lap in, and today I paid the price of that.”

Sainz had a heavy impact with the barrier at the end of Q3

Ferrari start Carlos Sainz admits that his “strange accident” in Q3 at the Singapore GP was caused by his tyres being colder than anticipated.

The Spaniard spun off after as he started his first lap, stranding himself in 10^th on the grid after failing to log a time.

He’d had to move over on his out lap to let others past – notably Oscar Piastri, just seconds before the crash – and that contributed to his tyres being too cool.

However after the restart and later in the session Ferrari team mate Charles Leclerc ran wide at Turn 2 after also finding his tyres colder than anticipated. He lost his fourth place time to track limits, and will start ninth.

“A bit of a strange accident there,” said Sainz. “Had to let a lot of cars through there, opening my lap, and my tyres were just a lot colder than I thought they would be. I misjudged the grip going on the bump on Turn 17, and it completely snapped on me.

“Driver mistake. I underestimated the grip I would get. Launching the lap, I was already under pressure with another car coming.

“And I knew that launching the lap, I was already going to be slower because of them approaching the last corner so slow, so it meant that I tried to do something that was not enough grip to do.”

Sainz admitted that it’s been difficult to fully understand the tyres in Singapore.

“It’s been a big struggle for me this weekend,” he said. “Very strange how it can change from one year to another, but like we’ve seen many times this year, to get the tyres in the right window, over one lap with our car, it’s quite tricky.

“I had a couple of decent laps over the weekend, but in general, very inconsistent. I had issues with the brakes yesterday, which didn’t help my build-up to the weekend.

“Here it’s all about gaining confidence, executing from FP1 to Q3 perfect laps, and I didn’t have that this weekend. I was just struggling.

“Yesterday, I didn’t get into a rhythm, and today, to get the tyres and the brakes into a window was just a very tricky thing to do.”

Sainz remains hopeful that he can have a strong race from 10^th on Sunday, assuming that he doesn’t have any further setbacks such as  a gearbox penalty.

“The car looks quite damaged, and I don’t know what we will do,” he said. “I just hope that I can have a normal race tomorrow, get into a rhythm like I got in the rhythm in Baku, and then we can show good pace.

“And I think this year, once I get into a rhythm in the race, we should be okay. It’s just over one lap with the black magic of the tyres to get everything working – I mean, you saw the mistake I did is not common, and not typical.

“And it shows that there must be something, honestly, a very, very fine line between getting them to grip and not to grip. And this weekend has been that way. So tomorrow, as soon as I get into a rhythm, we will be there.”

He added: “Let’s get into the rhythm first, and then see how’s the pace, see what the strategy allows us to do, and hopefully we can move forward. Extra DRS, I’m still optimistic.

“But I need a good night’s sleep to feel optimistic also, because today was a big blow for me, and I didn’t enjoy it at all.”

Sainz admitted he was surprised by a “weird” transition for McLaren from Friday to Saturday.

“I don’t like considering Friday too much, because you don’t know what the others are doing, and I never tried to take too many conclusions from that,” he said.

“You can already see in FP3, Lando went a second quicker than FP2, that shows that there was something that they were sandbagging with. And even in Q3 they did only went one-tenth quicker than FP3, which is quite weird.

“So there’s something strange going on, probably with the tyre preparation and how much you can extract this weekend with the tyres, because it’s not normal that is only one-tenth between FP3 fastest lap and Q3 lap.”

Hulkenberg was caught out by the track staying green

Nico Hulkenberg admits that he was surprised by the late call for a VSC after Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz crashed that ultimately cost him two places in the Formula 1 Azerbaijan GP.

He also spoke to FIA race director Niels Wittich on the matter immediately after the Baku race.

The Haas driver passed the yellows at the accident scene, and he assumed from past experience that given its scale that there would be an immediate red flag or safety car situation.

In fact the rest of the track remained green and on realising that both Lewis Hamilton and Hulkenberg’s own team mate Oliver Bearman got the jump on the German, demoting him from ninth place to 11^th before the VSC was called for and positions were frozen.

“I think I was certainly surprised that it went back to green, and it took quite a while then for the VSC to come out,” Hulkenberg said in Singapore on Thursday.

“I think in recent history, and for example in Melbourne last year after the Alpine crash, the red flag happened very, very quickly. So certainly a bit different to I think how it’s been handled in the past. So that was surprising.

“But all-in-all it was a difficult weekend in Baku somehow. And Sunday actually looked pretty alright, it looked like we were on for a happy end.

“But in the last two laps, things went south, and slipped through our through our hands, which obviously is very frustrating, and a missed opportunity. But I’ve turned the page, I’ve moved on.”

Hulkenberg confirmed that he spoke to Wittich about the yellow flag situation.

“I went to see Niels after the race,” he noted. “I can’t say too much. He felt that he handled it how he usually handles it. He didn’t feel that it was different.”

He added: “I suspect it’s going to come up tomorrow in the drivers’ meeting. I don’t know what the outcome will be, or the consequence, but I think we’ll talk about it and see if it’s going to be any different in the future.”

Hulkenberg insisted that his frustration wasn’t compounded by the fact that he was jumped by own his rookie team mate.

“No, the contrary to be honest, that we did pick up a point, and more relief than frustration,” he said when asked by this writer.

“Ollie did a great job all weekend. He almost didn’t put a foot wrong. A very challenging track. I guess it helps that I think someone said that it’s one of his favourite tracks, and he was very confident. He was really on the money. So fair play to him, he did really well.”