Helmut Marko identifies Alpine ‘problem’ as he wades in on Esteban Ocon-Pierre Gasly drama

Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko believes Alpine face a “problem” following Esteban Ocon’s collision with teammate Pierre Gasly at the F1 Monaco Grand Prix.

Ocon made tyre-to-tyre contact with Gasly and was sent airborne when he attempted an audacious lunge on his Alpine teammate down the inside at Portier on the opening lap of Sunday’s race.

While Gasly escaped without damage and was able to score a point in 10th, Ocon’s race was over. The Frenchman has been handed a five-place grid penalty for the next race in Canada and felt the wrath of Alpine boss Bruno Famin, who warned of “consequences” for the incident.

There have been suggestions that Alpine could drop Ocon for the next event, with Sky Sports F1 reporting this is “under serious consideration”.

Ocon has endured a trouble past with Gasly and it is not the first time that he has had a spiky relationship with a teammate, having also clashed with Sergio Perez at Force India/Racing Point and Fernando Alonso at Alpine.

Speaking from his own experiences at Red Bull, Marko reckons Alpine will have “difficulty” trying to diffuse the tension between the two Frenchmen.

“We’ve had this twice at Red Bull Racing with team-mates getting in each other’s way, once in 2018 with Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen in Baku, and once with Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel in 2010 in Turkey,” Marko wrote in his column for Speedweek.

“In both cases, we summoned both drivers to the company and discussed it openly with them, making it clear to them that such collisions with team-mates are simply not acceptable.

“Ricciardo then left us at the end of the season and there were no more such incidents with Webber; they accepted that this was not acceptable.

“Measures are difficult to implement in such a case, because you would have to be able to prove clear intent, and that is not the case. The driver then says that he misjudged the accident, which means that there is no longer any intent.

“The problem with Alpine, however, is that it wasn’t the first time, and I think that adds to the difficulty.”

Gasly fumed at Ocon after the incident, saying: “Unfortunately, it wasn’t as peaceful as we had planned. I don’t want to go into too much details, but these things should not happen.

“It was a clear instruction from the team on what to do, what we were supposed to do, and this wasn’t respected [by Ocon].

“I’m just glad we managed to get out of it with only some front wing damage and a couple of things, and luckily with the red flag we managed to repair it.”