Alpine disaster
One of the teams that paid dearly (if not the heaviest) for the second red flag displayed during the Australian Grand Prix it was definitely theAlpine: up to that moment, the two drivers of the French team had been protagonists of a good race, both present in the points with two laps to go. However, on the second restart, the top-10 goal was literally shattered for a maneuver of Pierre Gasly which turned into a contact with your teammate Esteban Ocon, with the two who concluded their race on the most beautiful in an impact against the barriers.
The accident
Gasly, who didn’t suffer any penalty for the incident, had gone wide when braking into the first corner, rejoining the track just as other cars were passing by. Among these, that of his team-mate Ocon, with whom he entered collided at the exit of Turn 2. Despite this, Gasly averted a possible sanction that would have turned into a potential disqualification for the next GP in Baku (being -2 from reaching the maximum 12 points allowed), but this figure took second place to what happened in Melbourne.
The regret
Not surprisingly, Gasly did not mention this risk to the microphones of the official Formula 1 channel, apologizing openly to his teammate: “I have nothing to say – he has declared – I am alone extremely disappointed and I just want to mention the positives. We didn’t expect to be battling with a Ferrari and to have Alonso in our sights for most of the race. This is what we will remember. Otherwise, I have no comments to make and I’m too disappointed to be here to watch these guys go for a ride.”
Apologies accepted
Gasly’s apologies were confirmed by Ocon himself, who wanted to defend his teammate: “I could have collided with anyoneactually, because there were a lot of cars that had gone off the track – has explained – in the end it was Pierre who didn’t leave me much space, but without hard feelings, came to apologize. Like I said, it could have been anyone. All weekend there was nothing going our way. It is extremely frustrating because we had good pace in the race, similar to the Aston Martin and Ferrari ahead of us, so we could have been much further ahead. We were having a good race and moving forward but the red flag destroyed our strategy. We probably would have been fourth or fifth, but this one it nullified everything“.
#Gasly #rest #apologies #Ocon #FormulaPassion