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Otmar Szafnauer is confident future communication issues will be avoided following a key meeting with Pierre Gasly and his engineering team after the mistakes made during the recent Spanish Grand Prix.
Gasly’s delight at qualifying fourth at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya was crushed by a double grid penalty for two impeding infringements as a result of not being provided with crucial information.
The Frenchman blocked both Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen in his Red Bull, with the stewards noting with regard to the latter that “the team failed to give appropriate warning” to Gasly.
Starting from 10th on the grid, salt was rubbed into Gasly’s wounds by a poor first lap which saw him drop to 14th.
The problems in qualifying have now been addressed internally.
Szafnauer said: “In between Spain and here, we met with Pierre and his engineering team.
“We met for about an hour and a half 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.
“It was unfortunate, had he actually started fourth and ran fourth, instead of starting where he did and then being pushed wide and ending up 14th after lap one. It’s significantly different running 14th than fourth.
“So 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.”
Unfortunately for Gasly, just as he looked to put that weekend behind him with a solid Friday of practice for this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix, his FP1 was over after less than four minutes.
It initially appeared as if Gasly’s Alpine had sustained a problem with the clutch that would not engage around Montréal’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
Clarifying the issue, Szafnauer added: “So as we always do, we run the spare steering wheels on both cars.
“The reason we run them is to make sure they’re functioning because, for the rest of the weekend, we don’t run them unless they’re needed as a spare.
“And lo and behold, we had an electronics issue within the steering wheel on Pierre’s car.
“Once we got it back and put the non-spare wheel on, it was all okay, so we’ve got to understand what bit of the electronics failed within the steering wheel.”
As it transpired, Gasly was not handicapped by the problem too much due to a CCTV failure soon after that ultimately led to the abandonment of first practice.
