Going on vacation with a free spirit… For Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, the objective during this weekend at Spa-Francorchamps is clear: to climb the slope after two weekends to forget for their Alpine team, the French team which has had two clean sheets in the last two races.
Fourth in the constructors’ championship last year, the French team is now sixth, after a disappointing first half of the season, between lack of performance and bad luck.
The Point: Esteban Ocon, you suffered a big impact at the start of the last Grand Prix (GP), which cracked your seat. Ho are you doing ?
Bad results and disappointments have accumulated in this first part of the season. How are you feeling heading into this last Grand Prix before the summer break?
Pierre Gasly: ??There was a lot of disappointment last weekend in Hungary. Afterwards, in our sport, it is something that we learn to manage. There are things that are beyond our control and, as unpleasant as they are, you have to know how to turn the page quite quickly. We would all have preferred to be in the race and be able to try and fight for points last Sunday. Unfortunately, Zhou [the Alfa Romeo driver, who caused the accident on the first lap, Editor’s note] had decided otherwise. There you go, that’s part of motorsport and now we’re going to try our luck again this weekend.
The two Alpines on the mat ? Zhou hits Ricciardo who in turn hits Ocon, who in turn hits Gasly ??????
E.O.: I want us to be able to go on vacation with our heads held high, with a good weekend. In any case, here, there are several chances to do well because it’s a sprint weekend. [Six GPs per year adopt the sprint format, with a fast race on Saturday, and the classic GP on Sunday, Ed]. We’ll have two opportunities to score points and hopefully we’ll be able to walk away saying, ‘There, we had a good weekend, we scored and we did what we had to do. »
Spa-Francorchamps is renowned for its capricious weather. Could a little rain help you during the race?
E.O.: I’ve had pretty good results around here in the past in the rain, but it’s going to be a tough format where you don’t have a lot of tires for the whole weekend. We won’t be able to drive a lot to be able to adjust the car… But in any case, whether it’s raining or dry, I’m fine with it. The conditions just have to be good to ride.
P.G.: Anything will be fine with me. I think in the rain there’s usually a bit more twist. So, I would say that maybe it can give us an advantage or give us a little more chance this weekend.
The Belgian Grand Prix is ??a special meeting, with its very long, hilly route. It is also a historic event of the F1 world championship, whose place is threatened in the calendar. How do you feel when you come here?
P.G.: It’s a track that’s really amazing. Clearly one of my favorites of the season, whether in the dry or in the rain. It’s quite close to my home, too, even if it’s in a different country… I’ve always had an attraction and a closeness to this track, because I had a little more people coming to me. support here, already, in the categories before Formula 1.
And on the other hand, I can’t forget that I felt the worst emotions in my life, here, with the tragic accident of Anthoine [Hubert, French pilot and friend of Pierre Gasly, who killed himself in 2019 in F2, Ed]. As soon as I come back here, it’s really very special in terms of sensations.
E.O.: For me, it’s a lot of different emotions. I had very good results and other more complicated moments. There were sad moments with what happened of course in the past… It’s a circuit where I went through several phases. I think we all respect this circuit as a driver and it’s a big challenge of course. It’s a mythical circuit, it remains a mythical Grand Prix. We don’t want it to disappear from the calendar.
Four years after the death of Anthoine Hubert, pilot Dilano van ‘t Hoff also suffered a fatal accident here. Voices were raised to criticize its dangerousness…
P.G.: There are things that need to be analysed, studied and done in relation to the incidents that have happened, because we cannot wait for such dramatic accidents to react. However, that does not mean that I think Spa is a more dangerous circuit than most of the other circuits over the season.
I think we do a sport that is extremely dangerous from the moment we have speeds that are over 200, over 300 kilometers per hour. No matter where we are, it can be dramatic and it’s a combination of circumstances.
E.O.: At Eau Rouge and Raidillon, the walls have been spaced out, everything that has been done for safety has been in the right direction. Now the problem is visibility like on any circuit. We had hot moments, whether it was at Suzuka [in Japan], or on many other circuits, like me at Interlagos at the time [in Brazil in 2016] where I avoided Räikkönen at the last moment… I trust the FIA ??(International Automobile Federation) to make the right decisions about track conditions at the right time and that we pay attention to our safety. It is the most important.
Going back to the poor form of the last Grands Prix, do you have hope that the situation will improve in the second half of the season, or do you already have your head turned towards 2024?
E.O.: Recovering from difficult situations, we have done that in the past. As we’ve seen this year, it doesn’t take much to go from zero to hero, like McLaren did. It’s possible, we just have to give ourselves the means to continue to develop the car and we’re working hard to get back to where we should be.
P.G.: For now, it’s not smiling. But as we all know, there are always better days after. No matter the storm, it will turn sunny again. We have to keep working, we know that we don’t have the level of performance that we would like, but there is clearly potential to get a few points. Even if they are small, they are important, we will try again this weekend.
