With Esteban Ocon confirmed to be leaving Alpine at the end of this season, attention has been focused on his teammate Pierre Gasly regarding the future of the team’s second French driver. At the drivers’ press conference ahead of the 2024 Canadian Grand Prix, Gasly spoke carefully about his future.
Alpine have only made clear that Esteban Ocon has left the team during this early and crazy season, with team-mate Pierre Gasly also out of contract and the driver expressing concern about his future by saying: “At the moment, my position is clear. At the moment, I have nothing to announce about my future. You will find out in due course.”
Gasly and Ocon: Uneasy teammates in the Alps
A long-standing feud in karting that began in their childhood led to Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon teaming up awkwardly when Gasly signed with French team Alpine ahead of the 2023 season. Since then, the pair have had several on-track skirmishes, most recently at the Monaco Grand Prix.
On the first lap of the race, Ocon made a bold attempt to overtake Gasly on the inside of the Portier corner, with the result being disastrous: the cars collided and Ocon was thrown onto Gasly’s car.
Gasly continued in the race and finished 10th to score his first points of 2024, but Ocon was not so lucky, being forced to retire from the race due to the damage he had sustained and also receiving a 10-second penalty.
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In the pre-race press conference, Gasly was asked about his relationship with his teammate and took his time, choosing his words carefully.
“There is a long story between Esteban and me. I think so far, over the last year and a half, we have been able to work and cooperate very professionally. As you can imagine, it has not always been easy with two very competitive drivers,” he said.
“But considering the story between us, I think it was good.”
Gasly dodged questions about his own future as easily as he did about Ocon. Asked when an announcement could be expected, Gasly replied: “I haven’t put a deadline on it. I think the market is pretty open at the moment.”
“We all know what the opportunities are, so I don’t want to go into too much detail about it at this point. I think the discussions are all going well and that’s it.”
However, Gasly also admitted that Alpine is still “at a disadvantage” ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix.
“We’re trying to rethink a little bit how we want to approach these concepts,” Gasly said. “At the moment we’re mainly focused on making the most of what we have.”
“We’ll do our best and we know we’re fighting for points just behind the top 10, but hopefully we’ll be in a position to repeat our Monaco performance.”
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