Assessment of the French: Esteban Ocon the sole survivor

Esteban Ocon (Sahara Force India): 12th

Gray day for Esteban Ocon at the end of the Melbourne Grand Prix, finishing in an anonymous 12th place. It had been a long time since this happened to him, as you would have to go back to Monaco to find the Frenchman outside the points (besides his retirement in Brazil): « It wasn’t an easy race today. It was very difficult to overtake. Even though I managed to overtake Lance (Stroll) on the first lap, everyone just followed each other until the safety car. »

What is all the more worrying for Sahara Force India is that both of the team’s drivers are out of the points while both Haas should logically have been in the points. This means that the Pink Panthers would logically have ended up in 13th and 14th places.

The only source of satisfaction for the team’s leaders is that the two teammates seem to have understood that they should not tempt fate with one another. That is why Esteban Ocon did not attempt a daring maneuver when he found himself right behind his teammate following the safety car.

Romain Grosjean (Haas): retirement

What a disappointment for Romain Grosjean, who thought he could score big points again in Australia, as he did two years ago when he was in 5th place. Moreover, his teammate, Kevin Magnussen, was also in a very good position (4th). So there were no less than 22 points in sight for the team. This should be put into perspective with the 47 points collected over the entire past year.

But everything stopped during his pit stop because his wheel was poorly attached, forcing him to retire in the second corner upon returning to the track. He remained positive as the on-track performance gives great hopes for the rest of the season: « We will come back stronger, as we always have. We lost a lot of points today, but if we can repeat this level of performance, we will forget it very quickly. »

This mistake nevertheless cost very dearly to <a href="/f1/actualite/22585-10-000-euros-damende-pour-haas.html" target="_blank" title="10,000 euros fine for Haas

"Haas, penalized by 10,000 euros by the FIA".

Pierre Gasly (Toro Rosso): retirement

Starting in last position on a track where overtaking is extremely difficult, Pierre Gasly was counting on a stroke of luck to climb up the ranks. But his hopes were quickly dashed, along with his Honda engine. The Japanese engine experienced its first reliability issue of the year even though the Barcelona tests had gone smoothly.

Pierre Gasly explains to us how his retirement went: « It wasn’t an ideal start to the season for me. After turn 12, the engine just stopped. It restarted but I was very slow and couldn’t shift gears. I tried to make it back to the pits but was told to stop. It’s really a shame because we had no problems in testing. »