Pierre Gasly and his Alpine team had a lengthy meeting to address the miscommunication that resulted in his double penalty in Spain.
Gasly set a season-best qualifying position of fourth in Barcelona, but he received two consecutive three-place grid penalties for impeding other racers. The Alpine driver, who switched from AlphaTauri to the squad at the beginning of the year, lined up 10th and finished there as well.
Alpine team boss Otmar Szafnauer stated that the team had a meeting to discuss the reasons for the penalties and make sure they were not going to happen again.
“We met in between Spain and here with Pierre and his engineering team,” Szafnauer said. “We met for about an hour-and-a-half to discuss communication strategy, how we communicate with him, the information that he needs, the timing of the information that he gets [and] what he does with that information, just so we can get a little bit better.
“Because it was unfortunate. Had he actually started fourth and ran fourth instead of starting where he did and then being pushed wide and ended up 14th after lap one, it’s significantly different running 14th running fourth.
“We have to make sure that when we qualify that high we can actually race there, and we will do some things differently especially on Pierre’s side.”
According to Szafnauer, an element of the problem might arise from Gasly’s lack of knowledge with their approach as compared to Esteban Ocon, who is in his fifth season as a driver for them. Esteban has been with Alpine for a lot longer, therefore he is more accustomed to his engineering team.
Gasly, who currently holds 15 points and is ranked 10th in the drivers’ standings, claimed that his team and he had paid a “pretty big price” for what amounted to minor errors in Spain.
In the first practice session for the Canadian Grand Prix on Friday, Gasly lost control on his first lap after leaving the garage. Due to a CCTV issue around the track, the practice was interrupted by a red flag and did not resume, preventing Gasly from losing ground on his competitors.
