The weekend in Bahrain started successfully for Alpine BWT Formula 1 Team as both drivers ended up in the top 10 in FP1! FP2 saw them fall back a little with Doohan proving faster with a 14th place finish ahead of Gasly’s 17th.
Pierre Gasly: “The conditions here in Bahrain are very different now compared to pre-season testing. In Free Practice 1 it was extremely hot and it was just low grip all session. It was quite nice to be second on the leaderboard even if it was not a representative session for various reasons. In Free Practice 2, the Hard tyre at the start felt okay but we just seemed to struggle on the Soft tyre. It’s important we understand that compound a bit better and see how we can optimise it over one lap. The midfield is extremely tight again and I remain optimistic that we can improve ahead of tomorrow. We will do our homework tonight and make sure we get it right tomorrow evening.”
Jack Doohan: It’s been a solid day’s Practice in Bahrain. We struggled a little bit in Free Practice 1 and I still was not completely happy in Free Practice 2… There will be plenty of useful data for us to run through from this evening’s session both on low and high fuel and across all three compounds. Tomorrow, Free Practice 3 will be hot like we had in the first session today. It will be all about refining some details, understanding the tyres and maximising what we have when it counts.”
Saturday was also strong with Gasly making it to Q3 for the first time since Australia and his performance placed him in fifth, setting himself up nicely for Sunday. Doohan missed Q3 by just 0.017s, a disappointing result, but started 11th on Sunday and finished a strong sett up for Sunday’s Grand Prix.
Pierre Gasly: “That was a very good Qualifying and we definitely needed that. I’m very happy for the entire team with that result and performance. I must say, I was struggling a little bit at the start of the session. I was not feeling that comfortable in Q1 with low grip and a lot of sliding. We managed to unlock the potential from the tyres from Q2 onwards and really extracted more and more from them as the session went on. In the end, Q3, and that last lap, when I crossed the line, I knew it was a special one. Even so, to be fifth and so close to the top three and even pole position is a nice surprise.”
Jack Doohan; “I have mixed emotions after that session even if the majority of the evening was largely very positive. We will start tomorrow’s race in our best starting position of the year on my side. It was all coming together nicely throughout Q1 and most of Q2. I think I missed the window on tyre optimisation on the last run – a little too fast on my warm-up – over preparing them and we probably did not maximise the full potential on that last push lap. Still, plenty of positives there and things to understand for future. Tomorrow will be a long race, with high tyre degradation quite likely. Starting in eleventh means we are knocking on the door of the points so we will see what we can do on strategy and aim to convert today into a top 10 finish in the race.”
Gasly started in fourth after Kimi Antonelli received a one place penalty for failing to follow Race Director’s instructions whilst Doohan set off from eleventh. Gasly started on softs, swapped to mediums and then hards and opted to stay out when the Safety Car came out. He lost out to Verstappen in the final lap but finished in seventh, bringing the first points of the season for the team. Doohan also took advantage of the Safety Car and gained hugely. However late on he lost a few places as his tyres lost life and was then given a five-second penalty for track limits.
Pierre Gasly: “I am very happy for the entire team that we scored our first points of the season in seventh place. We lost a position on the last lap to Max [Verstappen] so that is a little disappointing but he won last week so we can really only take the positives from that effort… Now we focus straight on Jeddah where hopefully we can be competitive. The car feels good in high-speed corners, I was impressed with how it performed here, so hopefully the same again in Saudi Arabia next weekend and we can repeat our level of competitiveness.”
Jack Doohan: “The result today is disappointing but I am happy that we opened our points tally with Pierre finishing in seventh place. The Soft and Medium tyres felt strong in the race and we were up to ninth place after the first two stints on those compounds and it looked positive for us. We boxed for the Hard to cover some other cars but the Safety Car was deployed at an unfortunate time, which gave some other cars the chance to change to fresher, softer tyres. It was very difficult to keep them behind, we struggled with the rear a bit on that compound, and then we had a time penalty at the end for track limits. We will now continue to keep on building on the progress the team has made this weekend and we have the next race coming up in Jeddah to look forward to in a few days’ time.”
