"I'd be lying if I said no" - Alpine drivers 'not satisfied' with team's performance in 2023 Saudi Arabian GP

Alpine drivers, Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, are not satisfied with their performances in the 2023 Saudi Arabian GP in Jeddah.

Ocon finished eighth, with Gasly right behind him in ninth. Last year, Alpine ended the season on a high, finishing fourth in the constructor's table, but it looks like they have taken a step back in 2023.

Ocon said that he's not satisfied with the team's performance in Jeddah. He observed how some teams have improved massively, so his team need to find solutions quickly:

"No, we can't be satisfied with where we are at the moment. There are a couple of teams that have improved massively over the others. It shows that it is possible, and we need to keep fighting, we need to keep digging, keep thinking, and that's the atmosphere inside the team as well. But no, we can't be satisfied with where we finished today."

Gasly, too, was unhappy after the Saudi Arabian GP. He admitted that Alpine are a midfield team by mentioning where he and Ocon finished the race. When Motorsport.com asked whether he expected more from the race, he said:

"I'd be lying if I said no. Personally, I thought that we would have a bit more pace to join the fight ahead of us. And unfortunately, we just finished where we are at the moment, eighth and ninth; it's pretty much just where we are. I think we were 10 seconds behind the Ferraris. Mercedes were definitely faster than we thought. And that's just what we've got at the moment. And we need to analyse what we can do better."

---

Alpine team boss analyses 2023 Saudi Arabian GP

Alpine team boss Otmar Szafnauer analysed his team's performance during the 2023 Saudi Arabian GP.

He said about turning the car down to conserve the tyres. He hoped that Ocon and Gasly could push and fight the Ferraris, his engineers advised otherwise. Speaking to Sky Sports, Szafnauer said:

"Yeah, we were a bit in a no man's land for a while, and then we turned the car down and were conservative on the tyres just to make sure they lasted till the end. I was hoping that we could push up to the Ferrari a bit more but was overruled by the engineers.

"We've got to look at it. We don't run light on Friday, so it's not the amount of fuel we have in; we just have to analyse and see where we could do a bit better on Sunday versus Friday."