Having secured P9 on the starting grid at the season opener in Bahrain never would have Esteban Ocon imagined how horrible the race was going to turn out for him. The Frenchman started the race with his car placed ahead of the marker. Vigilant FIA stewards found him in violation and handed him a 5-second time penalty. As he was in the pit box, one of the mechanics started working before he served the full 5-second penalty. That resulted in another time penalty, for 10 seconds this time around. While he was coming into the pit lane, the Stewards found him speeding and slapped him with another 5-second penalty. Ocon’s tough evening finally concluded with a mechanical failure that saw him retire from the race. In a recent interview, he revealed how the discussion with the FIA went through and led to him admitting the mistakes.

Alpine’s drivers saw their fate exchange towards the end of the race in Sakhir. Pierre Gasly failed to get out of Q1 and started the race from the back of the grid. However, putting up a display of maturity and calculated aggression, he finished P9, scoring some crucial points for the team. All this while, Ocon continued with his struggles, only to bow out prematurely.

Reflecting on his penalties during the Saudi Arabia pre-race press conference, Esteban told, “We admit our mistakes in Bahrain, we clearly got it wrong. There’s a saying that when it rains, it pours. That’s what happened to us in Bahrain. Collectively, we are usually very good at operational things like that, and this time we were not.”

“I’ve had the meeting with the FIA just to understand what exactly happened, it is clear now and we move forward.”

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Overall, Esteban felt the team just needed to work on carrying the qualifying speed to the race day.

Esteban Ocon talks about his love for the Jeddah circuit

Last year, Alpine made the most of the regulation changes, catching McLaren by surprise. The car had some serious pace, albeit with some reliability issues. That being said, they could not have asked for a better result than the 4th position in the standings. The race in Jeddah was a part of that success story where Ocon qualified P5 and finished P6.

In the FIA presser, he said, “We got P9 in qualifying [in Bahrain], but we qualified fifth here last year and we’ve been very strong on this track and it is a track I’ve been enjoying racing at.”

“Hopefully we can repeat the same [this weekend], be competitive and have a good race weekend.”

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Given how the entire midfield is bunching up with not much separating them in terms of track timings, Alpine will need both their drivers to grab every opportunity to give them a chance at replicating last year’s success. They will hope that Ocon’s bad luck in Sakhir was a one-off incident.