Feature

Team Talk - Sunday in Hungaroring

Alpine F1

Pierre Gasly
“It’s been a frustrating weekend. I started from the Pit Lane after introducing a new battery into my pool of Power Unit components. Our early pace looked promising so we extended the first stint to make up some positions. Our strategy looked like it was going to work out so it feels like we missed a real opportunity as we had to retire the car with a hydraulic leak at the halfway point. It’s a tough end of another challenging weekend for us. We just have to be better and we need to look into our issues and understand why they happen. We move on and we will continue to work on it in order to get on top of these things. We must ensure that we do not repeat these mistakes and come back stronger next weekend in Belgium.”

Esteban Ocon
“It was a disappointing day and weekend overall. Apart from the start and the opening laps - where we made up four places - there is nothing too much to say about the race. We need to sit down and review but looking back we probably pitted too early in the first stint trying the undercut and should have extended. Then we needed to box towards the end as the tyres had no grip left. We have plenty of things to analyse and improve on - operationally, performance-wise and reliability - from this weekend. We need a good reset before Spa next week and try to finish on a positive note before the summer break.”

Bruno Famin, team principal
“After yesterday’s compromised Qualifying, we decided strategically to introduce a new battery to Pierre’s Power Unit pool, which meant he started from the Pit Lane. Pierre did a solid job on his first stint to be in sync with the cars who finished close to the points at the end of the race. We had a hydraulic leak and we absolutely need to get rid of these recurring problems. On Esteban’s side, we were in line with the early stoppers but track position is key at this circuit but we were not able to manage the tyres as well as planned. We have an immediate chance to do a much better job in Spa-Francorchamps next weekend where we must target a positive end before the summer break.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.