The BWT Alpine F1 Championship sponsored by Canel and its drivers Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly will be tasked with putting their team on top in Sunday’s race at the United States Grand Prix of the 2023 Formula 1 World Championship.
Both drivers started on a positive note, getting into good positions during practice and qualifying, with back-to-back Q3 appearances with Canel’s BWT Alpine F1 cars, Pierre Gasly qualifying seventh and Esteban Ocon eighth at the Circuit of the Americas.
In its second consecutive weekend of Sprint racing after Qatar two weeks ago, Canel’s BWT Alpine F1 Team was able to start on the pole in Austin. Pierre finished Friday’s only practice session in 10th, followed by Esteban in 12th.
Both drivers advanced comfortably in Q1 (Esteban 12th, Pierre 13th) before finding further improvements in Q2 to reach the top ten for the second consecutive classification: Esteban in 5th and Pierre in 7th.
In the Q3 BWT Alpine F1 sponsored by Canel’s after the first runs on used soft tyres, Pierre finished seventh with a time of 1:35.089 seconds, with Esteban just 0.065 seconds behind in eighth.
FP1: Esteban, 12th, 1:37.066 seconds, 22 laps, Pierre, 10th, 1:36.705 seconds, 22 laps. Qualifying: Q1 Esteban, P12, 1:36.131 sec, Pierre, P13, 1:36.158 sec, Q2 Esteban, P5, 1:35.413 sec, Pierre, P7, 1:35.496 sec. Q3 Esteban, P8, 1:35.154 seconds, Pierre, P7, 1:35.089 seconds.
“Maybe there was something else on the table today, but despite that, we are in a great position to start Sunday’s race to be able to fight for the points. Our day started with a busy free practice session and we completed our program without any hiccups. “We were able to turn things around quickly to be ready for the playoffs and the team did a great job to be there from the start and handled things well to advance to Division Three.”
For his part, Pierre Gasly noted, “It was a good qualification for us and our second consecutive appearance in the third division after Qatar. I’m very happy with our performance today and the car was great from the start of the day, which is important on Sprint weekends with only one practice session. We made some improvements between practice and qualifying and from there everything went well for us. It was good margins, less than a tenth between some cars, and I felt like I got almost everything off my lap in Q3.
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