BWT Alpine F1 Team enters the Formula 1 summer break fourth in the Constructors’ Championship after scoring six points in today’s Hungarian Grand Prix with Fernando Alonso eighth and Esteban Ocon ninth at the Hungaroring.
It was a hard-fought 70-lap race in Budapest with both drivers executing a medium to hard one-stop strategy. After a late virtual safety car, Esteban had to fight on the final lap to stay behind Sebastian Vettel, whom he was able to edge out by 0.1 seconds at the checkered flag.
Both riders started with Medium tires and lost a few positions at the start. On lap 12, Esteban was eighth and Fernando ninth. Fernando made his only pit stop on lap 22 for Hards with Esteban two laps later for his pit stop for the same compound.
From there, patience was key to making the one-stop shop work all the way to the flag. With Fernando showing strong pace, the team swapped positions on lap 41 with Fernando overtaking Esteban on Turn 1. Both drivers managed their second stints well to finish eighth and ninth by the end of the race.
Esteban Ocon: “We can be happy to score points with both cars today and that’s always positive, especially as we enter the break of the season. I don’t think we maximized our potential in the race and we will discuss as a team as best we can.” do to improve myself. The one-stop was tough today but we managed to score some points and I had to defend hard from Seb [Vettel] in the last lap. Overall we are still heading into the break in fourth in the Constructors’ Championship and will be hungry to extend our lead in a few weeks. I am proud of the team for the improved performance over the past two months and we will aim to continue this upward trajectory when the season returns after the well-deserved rest.”
Fernando Alonso: “It was a tough race today and we are delighted to have doubled the points. We managed to avoid the cars in a busy Turn 1 on the first lap and lost a few positions. After that we focused mainly on our race pace and we wanted to make the one stop strategy work on the hard tires, we didn’t have a choice of two medium compounds for the race and instead maxed out our tire choice for qualifying. Saturday Our pace from yesterday made us quite optimistic for today and “We were expecting a better result. Overall we are still ahead of McLaren going into the summer break, so it’s a good team result. We just have to keep scoring points like we did today and hopefully that consistency will be our strength in the battle for fourth place among the Constructors.”
Otmar Szafnauer, Team Principal: “After scoring six points in today’s Hungarian Grand Prix, the team remain fourth in the constructors’ championship as we head into the summer break. That in itself is a great achievement and we gives real focus to continue and attack the rest of the year when we head to Belgium next month. It was a tricky race for us today with different strategies in place in the peloton. We opted for a one stop with both cars which meant we had to be very careful on both stints on the Medium and Hard tires to make sure we could reach the checkered flag with enough pace in hand. finally did a good job of holding others back on two stops that were coming on strong with fresher tyres.As always, we’ll review our race to see what we can improve for next time. We will be ready to continue the enjoyable fight in the championship with our competitors when racing resumes at the end of August. For now, after a busy season so far, the whole team deserves the break and we will certify exhausted to recharge our energy ready for the resumption of the season.”
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