Safnauer: Such performances should not be repeated

The results of the Azerbaijani stage of the championship upset Alpine F1: Pierre Gasly finished 14th, Esteban Ocon – 15th. The factory Renault team can only hope that things will go better in Miami.

Esteban Ocon (15th): “Today we gave everything, with risky tactics in the hope that a safety car would appear on the track during the race or that an incident would occur, but everything did not go as expected.

We can be proud of the efforts made and the fact that we have made the most of the source of stiff tires. Although in the end I was a little scared when I turned into the pits and saw people pouring into the pit lane, even though the race wasn’t even over yet. Fortunately there were no consequences, but we have to make sure this does not happen again.

When it comes to pace, we weren’t at the level we wanted to be this weekend, so now we need to analyze everything and perform with more confidence in Miami. I know that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

Pierre Gasley (14th): “We will all try to leave this weekend in the past as soon as possible, because it only brought frustration to the team. We must try to ensure that there are no more such low results. We shouldn’t perform so badly, so next week in Miami, where there’s a more traditional circuit, we should try to recoup.

In the race we tried to use non-standard tactics and hoped for luck, but in the end we couldn’t show a better result. I managed to make some good maneuvers, it’s always fun, but it’s even more fun when you get points by overtaking. Now I will prepare for the upcoming Miami Grand Prix.”

Otmar Safnauer, team leader: “The weekend in Baku was very unfortunate for us and such bad performances should not be repeated. The problems started on Friday and after that we were unable to correct the situation.

During the training it turned out that the settings of the machines were far from ideal, and both had technical problems that meant that we had to solve extremely difficult problems in the remaining days of the weekend.

In the future, such problems should be kept to a minimum to ensure that all race weekends start better – only then on Saturday and Sunday will we have a good chance of points.

In Australia we showed what pace our machine is capable of, and in Miami we have a better chance to evaluate the effectiveness of technical innovations. The team needs to keep working hard, trying to figure out how to move forward to exploit the full potential of the A523 and show better results next weekend in the US.”