It would be fair to say that the Alpine F1 Team will have been disappointed with their performance in the 2021 French Grand Prix Qualifying, with Esteban Ocon qualifying in a underwhelming 11th and Fernando Alonso finishing the three qualifying sessions in ninth position.
In the week Esteban Ocon signed a new long-term 3 year deal with Alpine, he was unable to make the final qualifying session but does have the consolation of being able to choose his starting tyre. The Frenchmen was disappointed not to make Q3 not making the most of a good potential shown in Q1 and having a poor second session on the medium tyres. Although this is disappointing positions can be made up in the race particularly with fresh tyres.
“It’s a shame not to get into the top ten but we know it’s all to play for tomorrow. After a good start to qualifying in Q1 with the car feeling good on the Softs, we just seemed to be lacking the pace on the Medium in Q2. It’s all about those small margins and it’s the difference between making Q3 or not. It’s frustrating now, but the weekend is not over. We’re just outside the points and we aim to score tomorrow. We have to think outside the box on strategy a bit, and we’ll give it our best.”
On the back of a couple of poor qualifying results, 2-time world-champion Fernando Alonso had a positive qualifying result, unlike his team-mate making it into the final qualifying session and will start the race in ninth position. Understandably, Alonso is delighted with this and the Spaniard feels that he has maximized the most out of the package that was made available to him. As with Ocon, points are given out on a Sunday so there is still plenty of work to be done.
“I am happy with today and I think it’s more or less where we expected to be. Our pace looked good going into qualifying and then I felt we maximised most of our laps during the session with a few exceptions. It’s going to be very tight tomorrow and we are around some very quick cars all on the same tyres. Overall, though, I think we have to be satisfied with our starting position and the points are given out tomorrow, so we need to prepare for the race in the proper way.”
