“It’s what fans want to see,” Otmar Szafnauer on the “breath-taking” battle between Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon at Saudi Arabian GP

The Alpine team Principal Otmar Szafnauer has recently talked about the “intense” battle that took place between his drivers Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso in Saudi Arabia.

The battle between the two aggressive Alpine drivers was one of the main highlights of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

As the battle between the top four was settling in, Fernando and Ocon were having a go at each other from time to time, in such situations, most teams try to step in ask the drivers to follow team orders, but at Alpine, the story was quite different.

The duo was allowed to race each other for an extended period of time and it made for great viewing for spectators all over the world.

Otmar believes the battle between the two was fair and while talking about it has said, “It was fine, it was clean.”

“It’s what the fans want to see. And we told them at the beginning, we’ll allow them to race.”

Otmar Szafnauer on when their battle started hurting the team

Otmar on one hand has applauded the exciting racing that Fernando and Ocon provided but also, on the other hand, talked about when their battle started hurting the team.

“We were losing a little bit more time than anticipated. That’s a little bit because of the track-specific stuff here and a little bit because the cars can follow each other easier now, which was the aim of the new regulation.”

“And because of it, if you can follow easier, you can start overtaking each other one lap after the next.”

The one downside of their battle was the fact that while Ocon and Alonso were busy fighting each other, Bottas was making up ground on both the Alpine drivers. At a certain point, Alpine had enough and asked Ocon to hold his position which he wasn’t able to do, and as a consequence lost his position to Bottas.

Otmar was asked if the team would intervene if such incidents take place again in the coming races, and as a response, Otmar said, “That’s exactly the type of thing we have to look at – when do we tell them to not start overtaking each other because it does cost you time.”

“That is exactly the trade-off.”

Alpine is currently fourth in the constructor’s standings and if they want to get a better grip over it in the coming races, then they certainly would have to act in a manner that would help the team in building a nice gap to the team in fifth.

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