Alpine keen to avoid repeat of Gasly's blocking penalties

Alpine Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer says the team have had discussions with Pierre Gasly in order to avoid a repeat of the blocking issues he fell victim to during qualifying at the previous round in Spain.

Gasly had qualified in a season's best fourth place at Barcelona, but dropped to tenth on the grid after being given two separate penalties for impeding Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen during Q1.

Gasly would ultimately finish the race in that position after initially dropping to 14th on Lap 1, but Szafnauer felt that more would have been possible had the Frenchman started from fourth.

The Team Principal added that discussions over improved communication had been had with Gasly and his engineers, adding that teammate Esteban Ocon was more accustomed to Alpine's processes than Gasly, who only joined the team from AlphaTauri this year.

"We met in between Spain and here with Pierre and his engineering team to discuss communication strategy, how we communicate with him, the information that he needs, the timing of the information that he gets, what he does with that information, just so we can get a little bit better, because it was unfortunate," Szafnauer told media, including RacingNews365.com.

"Had he actually started fourth and ran fourth instead of starting where he did and then being pushed wide and ended up 14th after lap one, it's significantly different than running 14th than running fourth.

"We have to make sure that when we qualify that high, we can actually race there and we will do some things differently, especially on Pierre's side.

"Esteban's more used to his engineering team because he's been with us for a lot longer."