2024 Formula 1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Saturday

Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

Esteban started from P17 on New Mediums, finished P13: Pit-Stops on Lap 7 for New Hards. Fastest Lap: 1min 33.481secs.
 
Pierre started from P18 on New Mediums, DNF.

Esteban Ocon: “Realistically, that’s all we could achieve in the race today. For us, we took it as another opportunity to learn more about the car. There was some chaos at the start, so we did well to stay clean and capitalise on some positions. There were some moments of close wheel to wheel racing, which was good at times. We are just not quick enough to score points and that’s where we are at this moment in time. We will keep our heads high and keep working to find performance. I am in Enstone this week and I’m looking forward to seeing everybody there and collectively working hard to improve our current situation. Australia is our next opportunity and I look forward to it.”

Pierre Gasly: “Obviously, it’s a disappointing day for us in Jeddah. We had a gearbox issue on the formation lap where we lost sixth gear and then lost synchronisation of all the other gears so we had to retire the car. We have to investigate why this happened as it cost us valuable track time today. It’s disappointing for the whole team as everyone is working really hard, bringing good energy all weekend, but things just are not going our way. It’s not easy at the moment, but we need to keep our heads high and keep working to find the performance that we are lacking. We’ll stick together and go to Australia ready to go again.”

Bruno Famin, Team Principal: “We said it was going to be a tough start to the season and it has been a very difficult first few weeks with the test and two Grands Prix. Even if we have upgrades coming, we need to understand our lack of performance. And, today, we have to investigate the gearbox problem, which cost Pierre valuable track time. There is only one thing we can do and that is to continue working hard all together to improve the current situation that we are in. Credit to the factories in Enstone and Viry and to the trackside team for their fantastic mindset and tenacity to improve quickly our current performance level. Next stop, Australia.”