Esteban Ocon’s Austrian Grand Prix sprint qualifying driving outside the SQ3 circuit has left his two rivals in trouble after it appeared to hamper the chances of Sergio Perez and his Formula 1 teammate catching up. Alpine by Ocon Pierre Gasly. While Ocon finished eighth in SQ3 – ahead of Gasly but behind Perez – all three drivers finished the session feeling that they could have done better when under pressure to start their laps.
And for Perez, who ended up stuck behind Ocon because of his flying lap, the situation was extremely frustrating as he felt he should have gone further if nothing had happened. “I don’t know what Esteban is doing there,” he declared afterward. So how is the situation going? All four were at the back of the line at the late pit exit in the final segment of sprint qualifying. Charles Leclerc pulled out of the line just as they were all finally starting to exit the pits as an anti-stall issue on his Ferrari suddenly cut off the car’s engine.
That allowed Gasly to gain a position, but he was also under pressure to set a timed lap as in front Perez had continued to drive slowly through the pit exit. The Mexican then chased Ocon, who had opened up a gap to Verstappen as the Frenchman was passing through the uphill pit exit behind Turn 1. But the trio of Ocon, Perez and Gasly then pressed on as Ocon appeared to slow again in the mid-section of the circuit – just as Perez and Gasly were responding to emergency instructions to continue to avoid getting stuck with the flag checkered coming to the end of SQ3. This happened a second before Leclerc started his plane, after restarting his engines.
By this time, he was close to catching Gasly’s Alpine, while Lewis Hamilton was also close to the Ferrari as he completed his SQ3 timed lap in the lead. “What is Esteban doing?” Gasly asked as he exited the chicane at turn 7/8 after a frantic lap. Ahead, Red Bull warned Perez “Still not safe, Ocon has free track” – after having previously told him he had five “unsafe” seconds left to exit turn number 3 uphill on the exit loop.
Perez was told: “You have one second, but hold position, Gasly is there” as he asked if he could afford to get back from Ocon’s back – essentially catching it at the final corner, with just a few car lengths between them. At this point, Ocon’s engineer repeatedly reminded him to “keep the pace” and he also twice informed him that Alpine was “satisfied with the tire temperature”.
Through the final corners, Ocon received the following radio message:
Alpine, with Ocon on the approach to lap 7: “The cars behind will try to gain position, we need to keep the pace. Keep this position. [Ocon: Copy]. Big gap at the front first, we’re ready, 33 seconds left until the flag.” Alpine, with Ocon at the exit of Turn 8: “Hold your speed, please. The car is only 2 seconds [later]. They’re on the outside now, but we need to keep our speed now. And 25 seconds until the flag.” Alpine, with Ocon’s approach at Turn 9: “Please go now, go now.”
Alpine, with the Ocon approach at Turn 10: “Come on, push now – 15 seconds.” Ocon went on to set a 1m06.101 which saw him slide deep and wide into Turn 3, he later said on his team radio that there was “extremely low grip” on his software and that had meaning Perez finished 0.093 seconds faster, despite running very close behind. After being given the final SQ3 command on his lap, Ocon said “I pushed a lot on the out lap”, which opened the exchange that followed.
Alpine: “Yeah, I know, you were five seconds faster [Ocon: Five seconds]. I know, I know. Ocon: Five seconds faster [than] I should have done. So, sorry about that, but I can’t do much more than that.” When Alpine seemed to accept Ocon’s explanation, Perez later told the TV crew: “I don’t know what Esteban is doing there”. Perez added: “Obviously he had to drive very slowly and I did the last lap 0.5 seconds behind him. “Basically, no chance at all. It’s a shame because today we were on a more promising pace. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to maximize that.”
Neither Alpine driver appeared too concerned about the situation when they appeared in the media after SQ3. “Overall, having both cars in the SQ3 is a good thing,” Gasly said. “Unfortunately, the SQ3 was bad. Just bad handling. We barely finished the lap. I had to accelerate on the outside lap to get to the finish line, [so] I had no battery on the lap finally and in Checo’s gearbox.
“So we have to look again to do better – because it’s the kind of situation where we can definitely do better. But Q1 and Q2 went very well and had a good pace, just a shame about final part of this qualifying round.” Ocon felt “it was obviously very difficult and probably not the ideal final run – having to accelerate that much on the exit was really difficult to get to the finish line”. He added: “We were pretty much at the back of the queue, me and Pierre, and I had to try and hold Pierre, basically make him go over the line. “So yeah, not the ideal end of qualifying, but I think maximum in terms of positions we could have done.”
