Alpine’s point-less season continued at Suzuka as their drivers’ races were ruined after they made contact at the restart.
The pair tangled as Pierre Gasly moved left to avoid colliding with Yuki Tsunoda’s RB as it came towards him. Gasly made contact with his team mate as he overtook the A524.Gasly, who finished 16th, said the damage (pictured above) significantly affected his car. “At the second [start], after the red flag, I overtook the Haas, then Esteban and then got myself alongside Yuki [Tsunoda]. At that point, I was sandwiched between both in an unfortunate racing incident.”
The clash, “meant I had significant damage to the floor – costing around 30 points of downforce – and therefore lap time as a result of the damage,” Gasly continued. “From then, it was a very difficult race, there was not much we could do other than push as hard as possible.”
Both drivers were lapped by the end of the race. Ocon, who finished one place ahead of his team mate, said the loss of parts from his floor (pictured below) did not affect his car as significantly.
“We picked up some damage at the start and after that we tried some different strategy options to give us a fighting chance,” he said. “But, ultimately, we were not quick enough today to compete with those around us and keep them behind after the restart.
“It was unfortunate to pick up damage, however, I do not think it made a huge difference to the overall picture of the race.”
Team principal Bruno Famin said “both cars suffered significant losses in downforce” because of the collision, but admitted their performance was not strong enough to begin with. “We are lacking pace and we must keep improving in all areas and bringing upgrades to the car.”
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Nick T.
7th April 2024, 11:26
Typical Ocon/Gasly behavior (though Ocon is 3x worse when it comes to racing with teammates). The two most petulant drivers on the grid…and the fact they’re both in the same team is utterly hilarious. Another Rossi masterpiece/legacy.
PeterG
7th April 2024, 11:35
Clearly you haven’t seen the replay as it was not really either of the Alpine drivers fault.
hje
7th April 2024, 14:01
He did, and that’s exactly what he drscribed. Ocon gets the blame for the incident he didn’t cause (this time – racing incident, very unfortunate).
I still remember how people blamed Ocon for Perez crashing into him, or even last year Ocon got blamed by some weirdos for both collisions with Gasly (in Hungary, caused by Zhou, and in Australia, caused by… Gasly). Lol.
Nick T.
8th April 2024, 4:30
I have. While I don’t consider anything either did dirty or anything like that, they were staying too close too each other especially for teammates. You know the opening lap is going to be hectic with unexpected movements and neither was willing to create a bit more space or margin for error.
Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
8th April 2024, 8:13
I would say Gasly is worse for being involved in incidents that he is at fault for. He was the one to get very close to a race ban, and Ocon in fact is one of the drivers out of the whole grid who coincidently gets among the least penalty points of anyone. At one point, he had 0 penalty points for a good few months if I remember correctly, which must mean he’s been pretty clean at that stage for over 14 months. This also happened not to be after one of his seasons without a seat.
Nick T.
8th April 2024, 13:41
When it comes to incidents against non-teammates, Gasly has definitely been worse. But when it comes to teammates, he’s awful. Review all the race starts from the past four seasons when he was just ahead of Alonso or Gasly at the start of races. In almost every start you can clearly see he focuses more on ensuring he blocks his teammate than making places. In 2022 at the Hungarian GP for example, he cost both himself and FA places at the start squeezing FA and then later in the same race, when FA emerges from the pits with a bit of an advantage he bombs into T1 blocking him at the expense of a poor exit and he allows DR to pass both of them just to ensure he wouldn’t lose out to Alonso. The start of Brazil 2023 vs Gasly is a recent example that sticks out in my mind. It was the same at Force India vs Ocon with them colliding so many times.
However, Gasly definitely owns 100% of the blame for the Australian incident.
Laz
7th April 2024, 11:55
No need for a hyphen in ‘point-less’ With how they’re performing calling it a pointless season for Alpine makes more sense.
Yaru (@yaru)
7th April 2024, 12:06
They still get money for participating, so not really pointless. And cost cap keeps the costs down.
notagrumpyfan
7th April 2024, 12:28
And impressively that already showed up during quali ;)
SteveP
7th April 2024, 14:29
Comment of the day :)
Retired (@jeff1s)
7th April 2024, 12:49
They even hired some mechanic from Nascar.
Seriously, Alpine’s fastest lap is 3 seconds slower than Verstappen’s. It’s Alpine Super Formula at this point.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
7th April 2024, 21:35
good luck telling renault their power unit sucks.
Coventry Climax
7th April 2024, 23:27
Actually, the problem might even be that it doesn’t suck enough… air to burn fuel with.
Jere (@jerejj)
8th April 2024, 5:40
I’m always baffled at how easily F1 cars get performance-affecting damage from even the smallest of contacts.
Nick T.
8th April 2024, 13:47
It’s been much worse since ground effects. Small damage to floor or side post is disastrous. Prior to ground effects, we often saw some pretty major damage with no effect on lap times. It was one Brundle’s most frequent tropes along with things like “cross-channel ferry” when he’d talk about the millions spent in the wind tunnel for the tiniest changes and then no performance lost when half of a front wing came off.
The craziest example in the history of F1 is when Button lost his entire wing during that crazy, wet 2007 Fuji GP and continued to race for multiple laps and no one behind was able to pass. I’m guessing maybe conditions were so extreme that everyone was going slow enough that not much downforce was being generated on any of the cars.