Esteban Ocon's pitlane start confirmed in both sprint and main race as Alpine's 2023 F1 Azerbaijan GP goes from bad to worse

It has been a horrible weekend for Alpine at the Azerbaijan GP in Baku. After Pierre Gasly's struggles, they have decided to break Parc Ferme to make changes to Esteban Ocon's car.

The French team have brought a whole load of upgrades to the first sprint weekend of the season in Baku. Ocon could only manage P12 for the main race on Sunday after an underwhelming qualifying on Friday. Hoping to make some ground after a dismal Friday, his lap in the inaugural 'Sprint Shootout' wasn't much better, as he could only manage P13.

However, as per F1 journalist Chris Medlend, Alpine have decided to make some changes to Ocon's car and will start from the pitlane:

"Pit lane start for Ocon, as Alpine has taken his car out of Parc Ferme. This should apply for both races this weekend according to F1 and the FIA’s release of the rules earlier this week."

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“In Baku, it’s clear we need to improve areas where we’re struggling for pace" - Esteban Ocon

After failing to reach Q3 in Friday's qualifying, Esteban Ocon admitted that the team is struggling for pace in Baku.

As per F1.com, he said:

“It’s not been a good day for us as a team. We obviously had some reliability issues in Free Practice 1, which did not give us much running time heading into qualifying. We tried to bounce back from our practice issues in qualifying and, in the end, it was not enough to reach Q3.

"At the moment here in Baku, it’s clear we need to improve the areas where we’re struggling for pace. We will review where we can improve and, as always, we’ll be giving it our best to come away with points tomorrow and Sunday.”

Alpine team principal Otmar Szafanuer added:

“With Esteban’s minor issue and the lack of running in practice between both cars, we did not get enough running on the various tyres in our preparation, and I think that has impacted us significantly today. On a street circuit, you need both time and knowledge to make the right set-up changes and that just was not possible today due to our issues."

It will be fascinating to see if Esteban Ocon can make up ground and overtake some cars to bring in points in the Sprint on Saturday and in the main race on Sunday.