Ocon rues Alpine F1 no-show “strategy mistake” in final Hungary Q1 moments

Esteban Ocon condemned Alpine’s decision not to run at the end of Q1 in Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying as “not good enough” after both cars were eliminated.

Despite the emergence of further rain prior to a Q1 red flag produced by Sergio Perez’s slip into the wall at Turn 8, all teams apart from Alpine returned to the circuit in an effort to beat the drop zone.

It became evident that the circuit was improving at the very end of the session, by which time it was too late for Alpine to get either driver out on track as they plummeted towards the bottom five.

Ocon and Pierre Gasly landed at the back of the provisional grid for Sunday’s grand prix, having initially looked moderately safe while ensconced within the midfield, and the former contended that it had missed a golden opportunity to make a play for the middle of the grid at the Hungaroring.

“We were 10th when we were on track, and we thought we were going to be 17th, 18th, 16th maybe at best this session, so we were going all in obviously for Q1,” Ocon explained.

“But we were 10th and 12th, so it was better than what we were expecting. We’ve done the right job up until now, but we were not out there when the conditions were at best.

“And it’s been two weekends in a row that we do these strategy mistakes. Three years ago, we were doing the right ones.

“Today, I don’t know what we do wrong, but it’s clearly not good enough, especially with the level of car performance that we have. We need to be doing things perfectly and today, we were going to be able to go through to Q2.”

Ocon added that “the team made the call for both cars to not go out and to save the last set [of soft tyres] that we had for Q2”.

Esteban Ocon, Alpine F1 Team

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

He also suggested that, amid the light rain, the effect of DRS being disabled was in the minds of Alpine’s strategists; asked if the drivers were able to make their own choice, Ocon explained that the call from the team to stay in the garage was firm.

“The DRS was disabled, so that’s probably one of the topics that put the team a little bit out of thinking we are going to go out and improve,” he said.

“But, if you think about it, we are doing [1m]17.5 in P3. There was going to be room for improvement even if the DRS was disabled.

“I tried to remove the screen once I put it back in because then I need to see the cars what they are doing on track.

“The call was strict and we didn’t go out, so I trusted the team. But probably things need to be different for the future. As a strategy we have in place, an improving track will always be a team call and a track getting worse will always be a driver call.

“Obviously we have the crossover lap time so it’s quite clear what tyres are best, what conditions the track is running in.

“So that’s something we’ve put in since 2020 and it’s been working every time since. But today hasn’t worked – I think 12th or 13th would have been possible.”

Alpine boss Bruno Famin admitted that his squad had made a “big mistake” in failing to return to the track.

“We made a wrong evaluation of the situation. We thought the track, which was damp, will not dry enough to improve the lap time – I think we wanted to preserve the set of new tyres.

“And in focusing on that, we just forgot the big picture. The big picture was to go again Q2 and then, yeah, we made a mistake.

“We have to learn from that, to change our process, maybe decision, but just to make sure that this kind of big mistake cannot happen again.

“You know, we are a team, and we win together, sometimes, we lose together. We improve together, we make mistakes together, then we work as a team.”

Additional reporting by Ben Hunt and Jonathan Noble