‘We don’t give ourselves chances’ – Frustrated Gasly admits Alpine suffering ‘too many issues’ after Hungary DNF

Pierre Gasly has called on Alpine to “stop allowing missed opportunities” after recording his second non-finish in a row, having been forced to retire from the Hungarian Grand Prix owing to a suspected hydraulics issue.

It was a tough weekend for the Enstone-based squad, with Gasly and team mate Esteban Ocon qualifying on the back row after a strategic error from the team resulted in them not putting a final lap in during Q1. Gasly then started the race from the pit lane due to set-up and power unit element changes being made to his A524 ahead of the Grand Prix.

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While the Frenchman did make some ground come Sunday afternoon, his race was over before the halfway point, and the 28-year-old voiced his disappointment about missing out on the battle for points when speaking to the media afterwards.

“It’s too many issues, too many problems,” said Gasly. “It’s a massive shame because we started from the pit lane, we [were] actually in front of Fernando [Alonso] at that stage of the race, our strategy worked perfectly with what others decided to do.

“I think we put ourselves in contention for one or two points, and… today it’s hydraulics, yesterday was the strategy, last week I didn’t race at Silverstone because of the gearbox.

“There’s just too many issues and I know the team is much better than that, so we just collectively need to do a lot better and stop allowing missed opportunities weekend after weekend.”

Pushed on whether – given Alpine’s challenging start to the season – the problems may have arisen from trying to play catch-up too quickly, Gasly responded: “No, these are two different topics. Hydraulics and gearbox and this is reliability, yesterday strategy.

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“I know we should not be doing this type of mistake and I trust the team, I know that they’re good enough not to do this, so we’ve just got to be more focused, we’ve got to be more on it.

“As I said, it’s frustrating considering we had the performance to – even from the pit lane – make it to the top-10 and fight for these points. We are having a tough season, we need to capitalise on any opportunities and we just don’t give ourselves these chances.”

The day did not prove much more successful for Ocon who, despite making it to the end of the race, crossed the line second to last in 18th place.

Quizzed on how the car had felt on Sunday after the frustrations of Saturday’s running, the 27-year-old answered: “Worse. Disappointing weekend from an operational side point of view, disappointing weekend from a performance car point of view, disappointing weekend from a reliability side of things – I guess that’s why Pierre DNF’d.

“We should have just saved the car at the end of the race, there was nothing for us to play for. We were not quick, we took not the ideal strategy. Nothing was good to keep so we need a good reset before Spa.”

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In terms of whether he and the team have any ideas as to why the performance was not there during the Hungarian Grand Prix, Ocon spoke of the difficulties in solving the problems as he explained: “Yes, plenty of ideas.

“First of all we were not very competitive in general, but there are other issues with my car that [I’ve been] having for quite a few events that we need to get rid of, but we can’t find it, so that’s where it is tricky.”