Chief Technical Officer of the BWT Alpine F1 Team, Pat Fry has offered a positive outlook on his team’s potential at this weekend’s Belgium Grand Prix despite numerous setbacks across the Friday running for the Enstone-based team.
A driveshaft issue for Esteban Ocon in Free Practice One saw the Frenchmen limited to just five laps while in Free Practice Two, rain throughout the session saw Ocon unable to complete his run plan for the session. During this morning’s session it was announced that Ocon would be starting Sunday’s race from the back of the grid as Fry revealed that a completely new power unit has been brought in for the twenty-five-year old this weekend.
Meanwhile, despite a slow start in Free Practice one for Fernando Alonso, a seventh-place finish in Free Practice two has left the Alpine team hopeful of a positive result this weekend in Belgium.
Encouragingly for the Alpine team, Fry spoke positively on the teams upgrade package delivered for this weekend’s action as Alpine look to claim the upper hand in the tightly contested battle for fourth in the constructors’ standings.
“Both of today’s sessions have been affected by the weather, which made it difficult for everyone across the field to get through their programmes,” said Fry. “As far as we can tell in these conditions, our upgrades are performing as expected and our times look promising.
“In the morning Esteban had an issue, which we investigated and fully understand, and it should not affect us for the rest of the weekend. We are also taking a complete Power Unit change on Esteban’s car, as a number of other teams are: the length of the track and its configuration minimises the impact. With little rain predicted for the rest of the weekend we can look forward to a cleaner Saturday and Sunday.”
