Alpine Sporting Director Alan Permane has conceded the team "didn't do a good enough job" after a nightmare Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend. The event got off to the worst possible start for the squad, with Pierre Gasly's A523 catching fire within the first 15 minutes of the only practice session during the alternative Sprint format, whilst teammate Esteban Ocon was also confined to the garage with concerns focused around the rear of his car. Gasly went on to crash out of qualifying later in the day, although Ocon made the best of a bad situation to reach Q2. But the pace was never present for the French manufacturer and the team failed to pick up points in either the Sprint or Grand Prix.
Alpine reflect on difficult weekend
"You need to start off well prepared, and just have a smooth weekend," Permane told media, including RacingNews365.com . "We had that with neither car in FP1, and it snowballed out of control from there. You make your own luck with things like that. Honestly, we didn't do a good enough job. "We had a hose fail on one car which gave us a huge fire on one car and we had a problem with the build of the gearbox on the other car. "I think Pierre did one or two timed laps in FP1, Esteban did two or maybe three and from there you go into qualifying. "Pierre had an accident which was unfortunate but Esteban did an incredible job to qualify 12th with the car he had."
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