Ocon dismisses Gasly’s protests about ‘complete joke’ team order

Gasly qualified ahead of Ocon, whose race was compromised on the first lap when he picked up a puncture and had to pit. He re-emerged just two places behind Gasly in the Safety Car queue before the restart. 

With Ocon effectively now running a one-stop strategy, Gasly found himself being undercut by his teammate when he took his second pit stop. 

Ocon was instructed to allow Gasly through later on to try and catch Fernando Alonso, before Gasly was told to reverse the positions after being unsuccesful in his attempts to overhaul the Aston Martin driver. 

Gasly responded angrily, saying: “Wait, what the f***, [are] you kidding me, why you saying like, I was faster, I’m on fresher rubber if he would not have passed me I’d have overtaken him anyway. 

“Are you serious? You’re being serious? I started in front, I was in front the whole race, you let him undercut me.” 

Following a further instruction, Gasly finally gave up the place at the final corner on the last lap but branded the team order as a “complete joke” and was seen gesticulating wildly from his cockpit after the race finished. 

Alpine claimed the swap was in “the best interests of the team” and Ocon, who finished ninth ahead of Gasly, agreed. 

"I've been with the team for four years now, and the rule has always been that, I had it with Fernando [Alonso], that if one driver swaps position, so in this instance, I gave the position to Pierre, I need to get the position in front to keep the position, otherwise, you give the place back to your team-mate,” he said.

"That's always what we've done, and if I am on the other side, I would obviously do the same, but I prefer the fight to be on-track. I am more of an old-school guy and would never ask for the position to be switched.

"But I understand the team's point of view, which was trying to get more places, to get Fernando and get more points, but unfortunately we didn't get that.

"I think we maximised the potential because there wasn't much more on the table.”

Ocon said of Gasly’s complaints: "It's not really relevant, because you need to fight for your place on track and until we can be as fast as we want, if you don't make the move, you never know who is going to be prompted [to be asked to move aside]. 

"Before that, I was in front, and so obviously we will discuss that as a team to see what we could have done better, but if you look at Brazil in 2021 with Fernando, Sochi with Daniel [Ricciardo] it was the same.

"I gave the position to Daniel and to Fernando. It has always been a team order that I've known and I wasn't surprised."