Frustrated Gasly rues race where he ‘just went backwards’ as Ocon is left hoping for upgrades in Mexico

Pierre Gasly admitted Alpine got their strategy wrong on a day when he had “big hopes” for a points finish in Austin, before he ultimately finished P12 at the flag.

It was a day where little went right for Alpine, who are embroiled in a tight fight for eighth in the constructors’ championship with Williams. The team had hoped for a big result with Gasly, who was driving the only car carrying the full new upgrade package.

Those upgrades seemed to be doing the trick when Gasly qualified seventh for the race, the Frenchman starting sixth thanks to George Russell’s pit lane demotion. He held that position off the line and in the opening stint, but when Haas opted to pit Kevin Magnussen to try and undercut Gasly, Alpine reacted to that one lap later – and that’s where their race began to fall apart.

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“I think we started really well, P6, managed to hold onto that position early on, managed the tyres on the first stint,” Gasly said afterwards.

“Haas had two cars to play with and decided to go aggressive with one car, Magnussen, who was behind. And we reacted to it, which with hindsight wasn’t the right thing to do as from the moment we boxed, it just went backwards.

“We had a slow stop, ended up in the traffic, couldn’t switch on the hard tyres and were just way to slow with the hard [tyre] compared to the medium. It’s quite frustrating as we had big hopes after yesterday and just feel that today was not good enough. Overall, as a team we underperformed.”

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Alpine’s struggle with the hard compound tyre wasn’t unique, with a number of teams finding the C2 rubber harder to switch on – especially if their car was following in the dirty air of a rival.

Gasly’s mood wasn’t helped by a time penalty either, the Frenchman penalised for overtaking Alex Albon off track – although the five seconds that was added to his race time didn’t make a difference to his finishing position.

As for his team mate Esteban Ocon, his race was over almost as soon as it started. He was tipped into a spin by Albon at the first corner in a classic Lap 1 incident. By the time he got going, Ocon was last – and from there, could only take one positive from the race.

“Unfortunately, the race got compromised after Turn 1, yeah not too sure what happened as I haven’t seen who really touched me,” Ocon said afterwards.

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“After that it was a bit compromised. [I] managed to recover a few positions but we were not going to be in contention for anything in particular so we decided to try and give the fastest lap a go to take it away from Franco [Colapinto], because he was going to score two points, which we managed successfully.”

Ocon didn’t score a point for setting the fastest lap given he finished outside the top 10 – but in denying Colapinto, he ensured that Williams only increased their lead in the constructors’ by one point, the Grove team sitting on 17 points to Alpine’s 13.

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Ocon is hoping he’ll have the full upgrade package on his car next weekend in Mexico, joking that "until I have it on the car I will not let myself dream."