Pierre Gasly: Points in Bahrain a “great way to mark my debut with Alpine”

Pierre Gasly’s inaugural race with BWT Alpine F1 Team saw him finish in the points, with a ninth place result, after starting at the back of the grid at the Bahrain Grand Prix. The French driver was pleased to be able to make a comeback after a discouraging Saturday. 

“I’m happy with today’s race and it’s a great way to mark my debut with Alpine. After yesterday’s Qualifying we were all feeling disappointed as that’s not where we aimed to be, so well done to the entire team for their hard work in turning it around for the race.”

Gasly said that he went into race day aware of the “challenging” task he had ahead of him, but said that he was optimistic that, with the right moves and solid pace from their A523, the opportunity to earn points was still in sight. 

“It was always going to be challenging to take points today, but we had confidence in the performance of our race car and we knew we had a chance to score points with a good strategy.”

Pleased with the decent start to the season, Gasly hopes to build upon the result in Bahrain and learn from his team-mate Esteban Ocon’s difficult race, which saw him take several penalties. 

“We need to continue to work hard, we have a good base and it’s important we now build on that. I know there’s much more to come from us. It was a pity with what happened to Esteban, and we’ll debrief collectively to make sure we’re in a better position to help both cars score points.”

“We had the speed to have both cars inside the points.” – Esteban Ocon

Ocon retired from the Bahrain Grand Prix on lap forty-three after being hit with a slew of time penalties that led him to lose out on the opportunity to convert his ninth place starting position to a points finish. 

It was several small errors that came to define Ocon’s race, beginning with a five-second penalty because he was not properly positioned on the grid, having rolled outside of the box before the lights went out. 

In serving this penalty during a pit-stop, his crew began to work on the car before the five seconds were up, leading to a subsequent ten-second penalty. On top of this, he was also given a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit-lane. 

“Today was not our day. Unfortunately, we made too many operational mistakes and it has cost us today. We need to analyse everything, all the details and learn from those quickly.”

In spite of all of the unusual missteps he faced in Bahrain, Ocon is confident that Alpine will be able to move forward from this setback and put both cars in the points in future races. 

“We’ll take it on the chin together as a team and look forward to the next race where I’m sure we’ll come back stronger. On a positive note, our race pace and performance was good and clearly, we had the speed to have both cars inside the points.

“I’m already looking forward to Jeddah. We’re going there determined to bounce back and get our season underway.” 

Credit: BWT Alpine F1 Team