In the Ardennes, the battle for the top ten was quite intense, with several teams ready to fight for the last points spots left by the top teams. Fernando Alonso took home an eighth place for Aston Martin, followed by Esteban Ocon for Alpine and Daniel Ricciardo for Racing Bulls.
If the Spaniard’s race was characterised by his choice of a single stop, which took him up to an eighth place that, at a certain point, seemed almost unexpected, the race of the transalpine Alpine driver was equally interesting, especially because he arrived with a set-up chosen as a gamble.
In FP1 Ocon started with the old package, both in terms of the innovations introduced by the French team at Spa and the rear wing, opting for the one with the highest load of the two available, unlike his teammate, on whom all the updates had been mounted. An opportunity to have a direct comparison between the two packages and obtain useful data for development, with Ocon then having access to the latest bodywork innovations starting from the free practice session on Saturday morning.
The most interesting aspect, however, also lies in the setup choices between the two drivers of the Enstone team: if Ocon had started with the most loaded wing of the two available and Pierre Gasly with the most unloaded one designed for Spa, the two then switched sides choosing different paths. Given the prospect of a wet qualifying and better tyre management in the race, keeping in mind the high degradation found in Friday’s free practice, Gasly had chosen the specification that guaranteed greater downforce. A decision opposite to that of Ocon who, already from FP2, had switched to the most unloaded one, diversifying the cars.
“We decided to keep a dry setup, to have a bit more performance on the straight, that’s why we were very fast in the first sector. But for me the race aspect was very important,” Ocon explained after qualifying, explaining the choice of the most unloaded wing, geared more towards the race than the wet qualifying. Nonetheless, Ocon managed to secure a precious ninth place on the starting grid, hoping that the gamble in terms of setup would pay off as hoped, also because with such a unloaded wing the fear was that the A524 would suffer degradation at the rear.
While it is true that at Spa the limiting axle is generally the front, on the other hand the doubt at Alpine was that the same problems with the rear axle encountered in the last GPs would recur, hence the choice to also split the configurations on the cars.
Esteban Ocon, Alpine A524
Photo by: Alpine
After losing the position to Albon at the start, with a Williams that, however, strategically could not count on two sets of hards like the Alpine, the French team chose to extend the first stint with Ocon, who at the end of the first part of the race thus slipped to sixteenth place. On his side, however, Ocon not only still had two sets of hards available, the most effective compound at Spa, but also a delta in terms of tyre life of five or six laps compared to the main rivals for the top ten. Added to this was the fact that the hard showed rather limited degradation.
It is precisely in this context that the wing gamble comes into play: throughout the Grand Prix, overtaking proved more difficult than expected but, with such a light set-up and that delta of tyres mentioned above, Ocon’s choice paid off, putting him in a position to attack his opponents, overtaking Hulkenberg and Alonso himself in sequence. Given the difference in tyres and the high risk of being overtaken, on the contrary, the other two rivals for the top ten, Albon and Ricciardo, instead stopped to fit the only set of hard tyres with which to reach the end.
History repeated itself for Ocon’s second and final stop, after which he returned to the track in fourteenth place. Taking advantage of his strong performances on the straights and fresher tyres, Ocon managed to pass Albon, Ricciardo and Stroll, thus climbing up to ninth place. The Frenchman’s only regret was that he was unable to catch Fernando Alonso, who in the meantime had changed strategy to a single stop against the two of his other rivals for the points zone.
Comparison between Ocon and Ricciardo in Belgium: note the 10 km/h difference on the straight
Photo by: Gianluca D’Alessandro
For example, the difference in speed on the straight with the Racing Bulls reached 10 km/h in favor of the Alpine: a substantially similar figure if the comparison is made not with the Faenza team, but with the Aston Martin. In fact, despite the fairly unloaded wing, the VCARB01 is not among the most efficient cars of the lot, while the Silverstone team had opted for a more loaded configuration to protect the tires, consequently increasing the drag.
“It was a positive race, the performance of the car was very good, we were able to fight and progress. Unfortunately, it is not the best result. Before the last stop, we had several seconds of advantage over Alonso and unfortunately he finished four seconds ahead of us. The last stop cost us a lot, unfortunately,” Ocon said at the end of the race, although it was clearly difficult to predict that the single stop would prove so effective. In fact, with Alonso this choice was born more need for the standings, not having much to lose, while Alpine focused on what was the safest decision at that point in the race.
“I’m still happy. We had a good pace and also enough speed on the straights to overtake along the Kemmel. In the end, it was enough for the top ten. There are some positives, like the pace and the tyre management. I think we could have finished maybe one position higher if we had done things a little differently, but overall we made a good decision to focus on preparing for the race with the setup,” the Frenchman added.
#Alpine #Spa #gamble #paid #flying #straights