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ocon and gasly battle on: waiting for trouble

Fight between Ocon and Gasly reaches boiling point: 'We need to discuss it'

3 July at 15:00
2
  • Ludo van Denderen

Quietly, Flavio Briatore walked through the paddock in Austria. By now, the Italian is 74 years old. Yet the former Benetton and Renault team boss recently decided to embark on a new adventure in Formula 1, this time as an advisor to Alpine. No doubt, the - on the face of it - worsening relationship between his drivers Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly is a concern for Briatore.

Before Lando Norris and Max Verstappen ran each other off the track at the Red Bull Ring, the same thing would have happened to the two Alpine drivers. At the sharp end, Gasly and Ocon fought each other and it was a miracle there were no accidents.

Gasly irritated after fight with Ocon

After the widely publicised incident in Monaco - in which Ocon eliminated himself by driving into Gasly - clear agreements had been made within the Alpine team: from now on, this was no longer meant to happen. The fact that mutual action did arise again caused renewed internal annoyance. "I think it was as clear as it could be before the race, but I can only control what happens in my car, I can't control this car and it is what it is," Gasly told GPblog and others about it.

While the frustration was visible on Gasly's face, Ocon said a little later he had no problem with the fight. "No, it was all hard and fair," the Frenchman, who in any case is leaving the team after the current season, told GPblog. So a slap on the wrist from his team for the, at times, spirited fight? "I didn't receive anything," he said.

Waiting for another clash?

Just as Norris and Verstappen had been foreshadowing a clash for several weeks, it seems the same again at Alpine. The two drivers are evenly matched in terms of level, so it is almost a certainty that at Silverstone or Budapest, things could boil over again.

If it's up to Gasly, that won't happen - although he obviously has a part in that himself: "This is something we'll have to discuss between us, but we've already discussed. We'll see if there's anything else," Gasly said.