First DNF of the 2024 Season in Saudi Arabia​

BWT Alpine F1 Team left Saudi Arabia this weekend without adding any points to their total after both a challenging qualifying session on Friday and frustrating race on Saturday which saw the teams first DNF of the season as Pierre Gasly was forced to retire with gearbox issues almost immediately after starting the race.

Esteban Ocon did finish the race and after starting from P17 he crossed the chequered flag in P13. He took just one pit-stop in the 50-lap race where he took a set of New Hards on Lap 7. Reflecting on the race he said:
“Realistically, that’s all we could achieve in the race today. For us, we took it as another opportunity to learn more about the car. There was some chaos at the start, so we did well to stay clean and capitalise on some positions. There were some moments of close wheel to wheel racing, which was good at times. We are just not quick enough to score points and that’s where we are at this moment in time. We will keep our heads high and keep working to find performance.”

Gasly added: “Obviously, it’s a disappointing day for us in Jeddah. We had a gearbox issue on the formation lap where we lost sixth gear and then lost synchronisation of all the other gears so we had to retire the car. We have to investigate why this happened as it cost us valuable track time today. It’s disappointing for the whole team as everyone is working really hard, bringing good energy all weekend, but things just are not going our way. It’s not easy at the moment, but we need to keep our heads high and keep working to find the performance that we are lacking. We’ll stick together and go to Australia ready to go again.”

The team now looks ahead to the Australian Grand Prix which takes places from 22^nd-24^th March at the 5.278km Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne.