Esteban Ocon equals all-time F1 record - but it’s not good news…

Esteban Ocon has equalled an unwanted F1 record.

06 Mar 2023

Esteban Ocon (FRA) Alpine F1 Team. Formula 1 World Championship, Rd 1, Bahrain Grand Prix, Sakhir, Bahrain, Qualifying — Esteban Ocon (FRA) Alpine F1 Team. Formula 1 World Championship, Rd 1,…

The Alpine driver was hit by three penalties at the F1 Bahrain Grand Prix, a nightmare outing to kickstart his 2023.

Pastor Maldonado previously held the all-time record after being penalised by stewards three times in a single race at the 2015 Hungarian Grand Prix.

What were Ocon’s penalties for?

An inaccurate start position

Ocon was handed a five-second penalty because his right tyre was outside of the grid box for the race start.

Failing to serve the first penalty properly during a pitstop

His mechanics failed to accurately observe the original five-second penalty when Ocon pitted to serve his first penalty - they started after 4.6s. This earned an extra 10-second penalty.

"It was a timing issue," Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer said. "We have a system that counts down in the mechanics' ears to tell them when they can start, and that was offset by four tenths of a second.

"The system started the countdown 0.4 seconds early. I've got to go see why that happened.”

Speeding in the pitlane

Ocon broke the 80 km/h speed limit by 0.1 km/h - incurring another five-second penalty.

"That's for the driver,” Szafnauer said. “He's got a pitlane speed limiter and when he believes he's out of the pitlane, he lifts off it and then off you go."

Ocon was retired when the penalties caused him to drop to the back of the grid to save engine mileage.

Ocon later reflected: "We were too forward on the grid spot - it was very clear. I don't want to go into details, but usually we are very good on all these operational things.

"What we've done today, we've done it the same way I've done the last five years, but today it has been different.

"We need to analyse, we need to see what happened, and come back stronger from it."

Szafnauer added: "Esteban being out of position at the start, he'll learn from that.

"It's very, very rare for this team to make those types of operations mistakes, like starting early on working on the car. I've never seen it happen here before.”