Ocon’s trio of penalties due to “very rare” operational errors for Alpine · RaceFans

Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer says the errors that led to Esteban Ocon getting three penalties during the Bahrain Grand Prix will not happen again.

Ocon’s first offence was committed before the race began, as the stewards ruled he lined up in an “inaccurate start position” on the grid. He was given a five-second time penalty to serve during a pit stop.

However his was not stationary for a full five seconds before mechanics touched his car. The stewards found work began on the Alpine four-tenths of a second too soon, invalidating the penalty, and so he was penalised a further ten seconds.

“That was just a timing issue,” Szafnauer explained. “We have a system that counts down into the mechanics’ ears to tell them when they can start and that was offset by four tenths of a second. So then it kind of just spiralled out of control.”

“We should just put an offset in it so it starts the countdown a half-second late,” Szafnauer reflected. “A half-second isn’t going to kill us.”

The second offence required another trip to the pits, during which Ocon exceeded the 80kph pit lane speed limit by 0.1kph, and so copped another five-second penalty. Szafnauer confirmed Ocon deactivated his pit lane speed limiter half a metre too early on his way out of the pits.

“Anyway, all operational errors, we shouldn’t make them, not at this level. We’ll have an introspective view on them and not make them again.”

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

The trio of errors came as a surprise to Szafnauer. “It was very, very rare for this team to make those types of operational mistakes,” he said.

“Starting early on working on the car, I’ve never seen it happen here before. We have good systems in place for that not to happen. So I’m confident that won’t happen again.

“Esteban being out of position at the start, he’ll learn from that and it will never happen again. So I think operationally, we can look forward to having smooth, trouble-free races.”

While Ocon retired after starting in the top 10, team mate Pierre Gasly climbed into the points having started last. Szafnauer expects better results from Alpine if the team avoids similar errors in future “and Pierre qualifies where he can qualify.”

“[If] we’ve got both of them in the top ten positions, which is what we want, I think we’ll score plenty of points and then we’ll fight.”