When Pierre Gasly decided to leave AlphaTauri and join the Alpine F1 team, an old rival from his youth awaited him. Despite the incidents in the past, the current cooperation is going well.
I knew it wouldn’t be easy, Gasly said during the Beyond The Grid podcast. But at the same time, I knew that we had become more mature.
I have known Esteban for a very long time, so I know how we work. I was a little concerned about how he would welcome me and work with me.
We have different personalities. We are two different characters but ultimately I think we work very well together. I think we understood our responsibility.
This means that a lot has changed compared to the past, because when they both competed in karting and junior racing classes, incidents occurred between them on several occasions. Alpine also had a collision, but without causing major hostility between the two, although it was bad that in Australia Ocon and Gasly drove into each other and crashed.
To be honest, that was very tough, according to Gasly, who admits that he and Ocon have a rather formal collaboration.
We don’t spend much time together. But when we go to the track we are working. We are mature, responsible, and we perform. In terms of our working relationship, it is very formal between the two of us.
But at the end of the day, that’s all I can ask for, I just want to be competitive. I know Esteban won’t invite me to dinner but that’s ok with me.