Team Talk – Sunday night in Qatar

Alpine 

Pierre Gasly

“Today's result is a real pity as we definitely would have been in contention for scoring points after lining up in ninth place. I was really looking forward to the race with the potential we had after improving performance of the car yesterday. We had some damage after running wide at Turn 14 and then Nico [Hülkenberg], on Soft tyres, put a lot of pressure on for a few laps.

“I held my line into Turn 1, we were side by side and then he made contact with my front left while making the overtake. That was pretty much our race over with a puncture and it was always going to be difficult to recover from there with quite a bit of damage to the car.

“Next week we look ahead to the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi. We will try to repeat our performance here and put ourselves in contention for points.”

Franco Colapinto

“We knew starting from the Pit Lane, and with the maximum tyre stints for this race, that most teams would run similar strategies and there would be fewer variables to give us opportunities to make progress. So, there wasn't really much we could do, or many cards up our sleeves to play with. It made for a long and lonely evening, even if we did manage to make up a few places and stick on the back of the cars in front.

"The car felt better with the set-up changes we made, but ultimately, we lacked the pace and strategy options to attack. I was disappointed with myself yesterday but today was a better day, however I generally struggled for grip and sliding particularly in the final part of the race. There's lots to take away from the weekend with the team testing a few things. Now we're looking ahead to the final race in Abu Dhabi and trying to end the season on a positive note as a team."