Martin Brundle left ‘annoyed’ by Alpine strategy despite Esteban Ocon podium

Martin Brundle criticised Alpine for opting for a “submissive strategy” when it came to Esteban Ocon at the Monaco Grand Prix.

法国人可能获得团队的第一个订单dium since Fernando Alonso’s at the 2021 Qatar Grand Prix but Ocon was well off the pace of Alonso and eventual winner Max Verstappen up front.

Ocon’s high grid position was the result of an excellent qualifying session that provisionally saw him take pole before moving down to the second row. Aware that potentially faster cars were behind, Alpine opted to be cautious and ensure if Ocon was to be overtaken, it would not be because of a lack of tyres.

The reverse instead happened as Ocon had plenty of tyre left when he came in to pit during lap 32 but was too far off the leaders to use it to his advantage. Brundle said a strategy like this “annoys” him as it means you accept defeat too easily.

“Alpine and Ocon decided to pace themselves in third place and go into tyre preservation which quickly made it a two-horse race out front,” he wrote in hisSky Sportscolumn.

“It annoys me when that happens because when Ocon pitted on lap 32 of 78 he clearly had a lot of grip left in the tyres but had dropped so far behind he would never be able to benefit if the front two had some temporary issues on track or in the pits.

“A submissive strategy based only on what people in the queue behind him were doing but they were rightly satisfied with a podium place for the jubilant Frenchman.”

Frustration with the Alpine strategy was not confined solely to Ocon’s side of the garage either with his team-mate Pierre Gasly questioning why they chose to pit him when they knew rain was coming,

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“I must say on my race I’m disappointed and confused because when we’re running P3 and I’m going green and we know the rain is coming,” he said, as per Motorsport.com. “I was in the perfect position to just stay long.

“I called [it] on the radio, I wanted to stay long and benefit from the conditions. And then we boxed, and two laps later the rain came. We need to review why we boxed, because there was P3 and P4 on the table for the team, and it would have been a couple more points.

“但我不想再次分享fru太多了stration, it’s still a beautiful day for the whole team with the podium but we have a couple of things to improve, and we’ll do it for next time.”

Gasly finished seventh to go with Ocon’s podium making their tally of 21 points the most they have achieved in a single weekend this season.