Internal problems at Alpine: 'That ruined their whole race'

At Alpine during the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix, they were more concerned with each other than with the result for the team. Ralf Schumacher cannot understand why the team management did not intervene in the duel between Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon.

Early in the race, Alonso and Ocon were engaged in a duel on Sunday. Alonso had started behind the Frenchman, but proved to have more pace at the start of the race. The duo was right behind George Russell and had a reasonable margin to Valtteri Bottas and Kevin Magnussen. A few laps later, however, the situation was completely reversed.

On the first lap, things almost went wrong already when Alonso tried to dive into a gap that was very small, and Ocon then closed that inside at the last moment as well. A lap after that Alonso did overtake his teammate, but almost drove him off the track. The following laps Ocon made an attempt to come back, causing them to lose a lot of time.

Indeed, in the meantime, Russell had disappeared on the horizon and Bottas and Magnussen had joined. After Ocon finally received the team order to maintain his position, Bottas placed an attack on the Frenchman. Ocon would eventually finish sixth and Alonso would drop out, but this duel did not do much good.

''What irritated me in Jeddah was what Alpine did. The internal duel between Alonso and Ocon ruined their race. I did not understand Otmar Szafnauer, even though he has only been there a short time and Alonso has a big role within the team. Ocon, in fact, was now driving like stung by a bee. It was poorly managed from the team's perspective,'' Schumacher says in his column for the German Sky Sports.

The German also still sees little progress at the fourth factory team on the grid. ''There is development at Alpine, but we are still talking about a factory team. It just takes them too much time to come forward, especially considering the power (financial resources) behind the team'', concludes the former F1 driver.