The Alpine F1 Team continued their points scoring eun in Sunday’s Turkish Grand Prix at the Istanbul Park circuit.
Fernando Alonso started the race from fifth place but was spun around on the opening lap of the race and came home in 16th place after being handed a 5s time penalty for causing a collision.
Esteban Ocon started the race from 12th place and didn’t stop during the 58 lap race and came home just inside the top-ten in tenth place and speaking following the action he said:
Scoring one point today does feel sweet after a challenging weekend and a very long race. It was good to take a risk today by going to the end on one set of tyres, which you don’t see very often. It was also nice to give the guys a break from doing pit-stops for the afternoon! I remember at this race last year the same could have been possible; it was difficult, but the tyres just about lasted and we have a small reward for that in the end. I enjoyed the fights on track out there too, we managed to muscle our way through, which was fun. One point is nice and hopefully we can keep building for the next race.”
Fernando Alonso commented following the action saying:
It was very tricky conditions today and very slippery. Unfortunately we had the two collisions, which damaged our race. Pierre [Gasly] was in a sandwich going into the corner and hit the rear of my car. And then I am sorry to Mick [Schumacher] for hitting his car going into Turn 4. I went for the overtake but it was very difficult to see everyone around you in the wet conditions. It was bad luck today and it’s a shame we weren’t able to capitalise on our excellent starting position. Nevertheless, as a team we still scored a point today and we’ll pick ourselves up for Austin where hopefully our luck changes.”
Alpine are in fifth place in the championship on 104 points, eleven ahead of Scuderia Alpha Tauri and speaking following the action, Marcin Budkowski, Executive Director with the Alpine F1 Team commented saying:
Today was a very meagre outcome for the team. Fernando was pushed out by Gasly at Turn 1 and then had another incident with Schumacher. From there his race was heavily compromised. He couldn’t find the pace even after the graining phase of the tyres and we have to check if there was any damage to the car from the two earlier contacts. It’s a frustrating outcome for him after starting from fifth, especially seeing where Gasly finished the race. On Esteban’s side, it was a masterclass in tyre management. He covered the whole race distance on one set of Intermediates to salvage a point, which, starting from twelfth in a race with no attrition, is a pretty decent outcome. Even if we extend our points scoring streak to fifteen races in a row, we lost points in our fight for fifth in the championship. We’re now turning our focus on the next race in Austin where we aim to bounce back.”
The next race see the Formula One world championship head to the Circuit Of The Americas I Austin, Texas in two weeks time for the first time since 2019.