Pierre Gasly (P10, 1 pt): 7/10
After his third place in the Netherlands, and points last week in Singapore, there's a sense that Pierre Gasly sees himself as the clear team leader at Alpine. Maybe that's why he was so incensed to be told to cede a position to team mate Esteban Ocon during the final laps at Suzuka. He really was raging about it over the team radio, but it seemed like a fairly common manoeuvre: Ocon had let Gasly pass earlier so that he could try and attack Fernando Alonso ahead of them, but it hadn't proved possible and so the team chose to restore the original order of their cars for the finish. Many teams use the same 'keeping the peace' tactic, but apparently no one told Gasly beforehand and he was taken aback. You can see his point as he'd been quicker than Ocon in FP1 and qualifying, although neither made it to Q3. Gasly felt he was faster than Ocon in the race, but in truth they were closely matched throughout and both duly finished in the points.
Esteban Ocon (P9, 2 pts): 7/10
Esteban Ocon was not happy to finish two places behind his Alpine team mate in qualifying despite being only eighth hundreds slower than Pierre Gasly. And on top of that, neither had made it into the final round. He was caught up in the periphery of the opening lap incidents and pitted, taking the opportunity to switch from mediums to hard tyres which put him on a different strategy to Gasly. Once all the strategy played out, Ocon found himself ahead of Gasly on track but his compatriot had fresher tyres, and so Ocon was told to let him pass so that he could challenge Fernando Alonso ahead of them. Ocon duly did so, but Gasly could do nothing about Alonso and was told to return the position to Ocon as a courtesy on the final lap. While it didn't go down well with Gasly, Ocon was more than satisfied to be the lead car in a double points finish for Alpine.
