17/06/2023
NEWS STORY
Alpine boss, Otmar Szafnauer has confirmed that his team is working to improve its communications with its drivers following Pierre Gasly's penalties in Spain.
The Frenchman was hit with two three-place grid penalties are being adjudged as having impeded Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen in separate incidents.
Having qualified sixth, this meant Gasly dropped to tenth on the grid, thereby making his afternoon's work all the more difficult.
"It had a very bad impact, obviously, on our weekend, from qualifying, for us to start P10 and drop to P14 on lap one, so it was definitely a pretty terrible start," said the Frenchman on Thursday.
"There are always things we can do better," he added. There were small mistakes, which were done in qualifying, which we reviewed and will improve in terms of procedure and communication.
"It was a harsh penalty. Unfortunately, there is a regulation, which is applied most of the time and then we paid a pretty big price."
Since Barcelona Gasly has visited the team's Enstone HQ to discuss the issue.
"We met in between Spain and here with Pierre and his engineering team," confirmed Szafnauer. "We met for about an hour and a half to discuss communication strategy, how we communicate with him, the information that he needs, the timing of the information that he gets, what he does with that information, just so we can get a little bit better."
"It was unfortunate," he admitted. "Had he actually started fourth and ran fourth instead of starting where he did and then being pushed wide and ended up 14th after lap one, it's significantly different running 14th than running fourth.
"So we have to make sure that when we qualify that high, we can actually race there. And we will do some things differently, especially on Pierre's side. Esteban is more used to his engineering team, because he's been with us for a lot longer."