Marcin Budkowski says the Monaco Grand Prix weekend was a poor one for the Alpine F1 Team, particularly on the back of some promising displays in the Portuguese and Spanish Grand Prix weekends.
Alpine scored only two points around the Circuit de Monaco last weekend thanks to Esteban Ocon’s ninth-place finish, while team-mate Fernando Alonso trailed home in thirteenth after being eliminated in Q1 of Qualifying on Saturday.
And with grid position extremely important in Monaco due to the difficultly in overtaking, the starting positions of the two drivers were reflected in where they finished.
Budkowski, the Executive Director at Alpine, hopes the underwhelming weekend in Monaco is only a one-off for the team, and he hopes the encouraging performances they put in at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve and Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya return for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix next month.
“It was a tough race for us today,” said Budkowski. “A difficult qualifying made it a challenge in the streets of Monaco where overtaking is nearly impossible.
“Both drivers made a good start and Fernando gained some positions on the first lap. After that it was the usual Monaco race with very few overtakes. Esteban did well on his first stint and after his pit-stop he was able to jump (Antonio) Giovinazzi for ninth, but we lost out to (Lance) Stroll who was on a different strategy.
“The bottom line is that it’s a poor weekend for us after two encouraging performances in Portugal and Spain. We trust that it’s a one-off and for Baku we’ll go back to where we were before Monaco. Nevertheless, our competitors in the championship have made the most of this race so we need to do better.”
