As a holder pilot the alternate?

It seems that it was eternity, but it happened a few days ago. Alpine He landed in Saudi Arabia hoping to repeat the good performance of the previous weekend in Bahrain, but from curve 1 they had to rethink the entire strategy when their main pilot, Pierre Gaslywas hit with the Red Bull of Yuki Tsunodaforcing both to leave the race. From then on, they only had Jack Doohan to try to save their weekend, but there was no case and ended in 17th position. Ergo: if there was a beneficiary of the bad performance of the driver of the team that runs Flavio Briatore, that was Franco frankntoto.

“It is disappointing to leave Yeda without pointsespecially for Pierre’s incident in the first round, given how competitive he has shown all weekend, “he said Oliver Oakesthe Chief of the French team.

While Gasly had classified in the ninth place, entering the Q3 for the second consecutive weekend, Doohan had to settle for the 17th position, both at the departure and on arrival. Despite the efforts of the team, which called the boxes as they removed the French car to make an early change of tires, the Australian did not endure the remaining 49 laps with the hard rubbers.

“We took the opportunity for Jack to enter boxes in the first round after the departure of the safety car and stay long (on track). From there, we could consider a single stop and keep Jack on track until the end. Finally, Jack had no rhythm with hard tires, which complicated the afternoon“Oakes explained.

Already by the end of the race, Doohan could not do much with those tires and ended up crossing the checkered flag a return behind the winner and followed only by Sauber of Gabriel Bortoleto. Without a doubt, it was a disappointing weekend for Alpine, which lately only has Gasly as a pilot capable of adding points.

Analyzing his Sunday, Doohan declared: “First, he did not paint badly. Obviously, we risk the security car in the first round. At first I hesitated it, because I thought: ‘Well, we have 49 laps with this hard tire’.”

And he added: “He was simply a victim of the back cars“.

There are still two weeks left for the Miami Grand Prix, so Alpine will have time to analyze this triplet of racing that had a bit of everything. “There are positive aspects to get this run of racing, especially for obtaining the first points for the team, and the performance of the car has been encouraging. We must continue to improve and we are already looking forward to the next race in Miami,” said Okes.

And in Miami returns to the paddock Franco frankntotowhich in recent weeks was practically admitted to the Simulator in Estone fulfilling its role as a reserve pilot.

The newspaper Olé confirmed those expected: the 21 -year -old Buenos Aires pilot will travel with Alpine to Miami. Now it remains to see if Alpine accelerates the times with Franco’s debut or if the Australian will be given more chance what seems to be Plan A. The collapint debut in Alpine seems imminent, the question is whether it will be given in Miami within two weeks or in Icola on May 18.