No points, lots of problems
Not even the return to China, accompanied by the first Sprint weekend of the season, brought any joy to the Alpine team. The French team, owned by Renault, also failed to score any championship points in Shanghai, despite theexcellent race by Esteban Oconwho came close to making the top-10 by crossing the finish line in 11th place – the team's best result of the season – just 2.4 seconds behind Nico Hulkenberg's Haas.
On the other hand, for the Enstone team there was no shortage, once again, of the trouble in the pits. In fact, during Pierre Gasly's first stop the mechanics had huge problems fixing the right rear tirerisking also causing a dangerous accident with Gasly taking off again, partially hitting one of the men who were working on the car at the time.
Accident in the pits and fine coming
Luckily they are serious consequences were avoidedbut the commissioners investigated the incident and attributed the full responsibility for the accident to the team. In fact, Gasly had received the green light to start and had no choice but to stop after realizing that in reality the tire changing operations had not yet been completed: “The right rear tire had not been mounted correctly – read the note released by the stewards – and the electronic systems that check whether a tire has been mounted correctly did not detect it. Furthermore, a team member mistakenly clicked the button to restart the careven though the tire was not mounted correctly“.
“As soon as the team noticed the problem – continues the document released by the federation – stopped the car, preventing it from leaving the garage. During all this, one team member fell backwards and was slightly injured. The team member was able to continue performing his duties for the remainder of the race. It was clear to us that the pilot was not at fault. After receiving the green light, she released the clutch and moved the car forward. However, she immediately stopped the car when the traffic light turned red. We have therefore established that the team was fully responsible for what happened“.
This mistake cost the team a $10,000 fine. A further blow to the morale of a team that never before seems to have completely lost the path to follow.
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