Alpine suffer SHOCK in Italian Grand Prix qualifying as both drivers go OUT in Q1

Sam Cook
Saturday 2 September 2023 16:35 - Updated: 09:03

Alpine have had a disastrous qualifying at the Italian Grand Prix, with both drivers eliminated in Q1.

Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly will have it all to do on Sunday after they went out in the first qualifying session, recording times good enough for only 17th and 18th respectively.

Ocon, who briefly took a trip over the gravel during his second timed lap, appeared to damage the floor of his car, leaving him unable to improve on his lap time.

Gasly meanwhile had reportedly been struggling with vibrations in his car, preventing him securing a top 15 place and progressing into Q2

The team had been slow all weekend, but they felt as though they had enough to at least make it into Q2. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

Gasly unable to repeat Monza magic

Alpine's race pace over recent races has been very good, and Gasly in particular has shown a fine vein of form, achieving a podium in the sprint race at the Belgian Grand Prix, before getting a podium in the main race at Zandvoort.

He now sits 10th in the world championship, one point ahead of his team-mate in 11th.

Gasly's only race victory of his career came at Monza, when he took advantage of a red flag and a 10-second time penalty for Lewis Hamilton to take the chequered flag in 2020 for the AlphaTauri team.

He will be hoping to emulate that one day with his new team, but this difficult qualifying will make that extremely unlikely in tomorrow's race.

"We did the best we could, unfortunately sad to see that we're qualifying in this position, but we knew that we would struggle on a track like Monza and we noticed yesterday that we were having quite a lot of weaknesses compared to others," Gasly told Viaplay after his qualifying elimination.

"Unfortunately we tried our best and it was not enough to progress through [to the next session]"

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