Can Alpine be the big surprise at the Formula 1 race in Jeddah? At least that’s what the training on Friday suggests, because the French not only shone with fast times, as evidenced by fourth and sixth places by Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, but they also put down fast long runs that were only topped by Red Bull and Fernando Alonso became.
Gasly had already announced on Thursday that Alpine should be able to annoy Mercedes. That seems to be true as the Silver Arrows were found behind the team on Friday.
“So far the car feels strong,” says Ocon, who was 0.436 seconds off the top. “And I think we can get even more out of qualifying tomorrow night. The team did a great job today to pull the program through and we will work hard tonight to be in a good position for tomorrow.”
Gasly is also convinced by the Alpine
His teammate Gasly is similarly positive: “The car feels good, we have a good idea of the direction in which we want to take the set-up and we can achieve even more this weekend,” he is convinced.
But for that the Frenchman needs a better qualifying than in Bahrain, where he only finished last place: “I’m concentrating on working hard with the engineers to make sure we’re well prepared for qualifying and with a better performance come back than last time,” said the Frenchman.
Jeddah is an exciting challenge for the teams anyway. So far, the new vehicle has only been used on one route: Bahrain. Both testing and the first race took place in the Sachir desert, so it will now be interesting to see how the vehicles perform here.
“After two weeks in Bahrain, it’s nice to embark on a new track and a new challenge,” Gasly said. “The pace here is very high and there are a lot of things you have to do right to be fast.”
Alpine is ready for qualifying and racing in Saudi Arabia
“It was interesting for us to see the car on a completely different track than we’ve seen so far this year,” says Technical Director Pat Fry. “We’re happy with our work today as both drivers gave us similar feedback on the direction we should take with the set-up.”
“We have a lot of data to work through in order to prepare for tomorrow’s qualifying where we are aiming for a significantly better performance than in Bahrain to set ourselves up for a better race on Sunday,” continued Fry. Conclusion: “A solid start from which we will learn a lot.”