Last weekend in Barcelona Alpine brought an upgrade package that seems to have given the A522 a boost. In Friday free practice the cars entrusted to Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon showed good performances, but on Saturday the team experienced troubled qualifying with the Frenchman only twelfth and the two-time world champion seventeenth after an incorrect radio communication.
In the race, both drivers managed to recover. Ocon finished in seventh place while Alonso, who started from the back of the grid after having mounted a new power unit, obtained the ninth position.
Despite the difficulties experienced on Saturday, Ocon said he was satisfied with the updates brought to the track by the team.
“I am confident that we are going in the right direction with the news we have put in the car. They seem to work. Of course we know that other teams are also making progress and for this reason we cannot let our guard down ”.
“We have to bring other news. Seventh position is a good result but it’s not where we want to be. We have to push hard to catch up on Alfa Romeo, which is ahead of us at the moment, and on the others. We have a lot to see after this weekend ”.
“We talked a lot among ourselves. We have picked up some indications that we need to analyze precisely because at the moment it is difficult to understand everything with this totally new car. For us, however, this result is equivalent to a victory ”.
Esteban Ocon, Alpine A522
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
Ocon then focused on the type of data collected in the race and on the goodness of the work carried out also thanks to the different strategy adopted by the team for him and for Alonso.
“We have completed everything and now we can also make a comparison between my data and Fernando’s as he had new tires at the end. These are all positive elements ”.
“I am very satisfied with the result of the race. I think being able to score points with both cars despite the starting positions is an unexpected result, but the pace in the first stint was fantastic ”.
“From the first lap until the first stop I managed to overtake two or three cars and we couldn’t have done better as Vallteri Bottas was much faster. Then I also fought with Norris, who sprinted back too but just as fast. I am very satisfied. The double point finish is a result that the whole team deserves ”.
The Frenchman then said he was surprised at the pace held during the first stint during which he had to pay more attention to tire management than pace.
“I honestly didn’t expect that. On the first lap I thought I was careful with the tires because maybe everyone was doing the same to get more rhythm later, but then they started to slip a lot. At that moment I managed to make some overtaking except on Bottas. He had too high a pace ”.
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