Philippe Sinault (Alpine): “We got back on the right track, it was essential”

Philippe, what assessment do you draw from this round at Interlagos?

We had to achieve this result. The objective that we had set for ourselves was both to finish without incident and then to have a race where we are in our place, at our level, but with the others too. It was incredibly close performance-wise. All the cars were quite similar except the Toyota. There are positives, we got back on the right track and it was essential. We have regained confidence. This allows us to resume the trajectory that we had started to draw before Le Mans.

Is it a relief to have both cars at the finish?

Yes, clearly.

It's'Alpine n°36 who scores the points, finally, she who still hadn't scored the points this year...

It's a good thing, it's probably anecdotal, because both deserved to be 9th or 10th. But it's a good thing, it's nice for everyone.

We saw that you tried to shift the strategies, notably with n°35. Was it due to Paul-Loup Chatin going off the track at the start of the race, or was it something you had already decided?

No, really, we are in the learning phase and it is not at all demagoguery to say that, especially in an event like here. On the starting grid, you had everything on the menu: hard, medium, cross, in front, behind, right, left... You can imagine that we too are in this learning phase and we have put in benefit from having two cars. Initially, we went with a “copy and paste” choice on n°35 and n°36. It's true that depending on the evolution of the race for one or the other, we took slightly different options to learn. (…) The priority was rather to take some margin while learning, to finish while learning. That's what we did.

Exactly, what have you learned here?

Lots of things. Really, this race was complicated. We learned a lot about tires, about degradation, the windows of optimal use were not necessarily those that we had identified.

You left with four hard tires. Did it surprise you to see the Toyotas and the Porsche go with the mediums and do the whole race on these tires with such high heat?

Of course. As they have more experience than us, this obviously appealed to us. On one of the two cars, we put the mediums on earlier to try to understand. This is why this race is very rich in lessons and it helps us enormously. There are reasons for satisfaction, we have nevertheless made progress on tire heating (…) We are starting to understand better.

The fact of seeing, even on an offbeat strategy, the No. 35 for a time on the podium, and even a time very provisionally in the lead, and being in the fight with the Ferrari, that must have done your morale good…

Yes, it’s good for morale. I just went to see the average of each driver, we realize that, as Le Mans passed, everyone attacked. We realize that there is a fairly homogeneous overall level and that it allows us to fight, even with the Ferraris. Everyone fought. Even at one point, the Lamborghini was super efficient. This race is saving because it puts us back on the trajectory we must take to continue to know [the car]. It’s already doing good for morale and for everyone, so that’s good.

Now we must follow this trajectory in Austin…

Exactly, we have to stay on that. We will arrive in Austin with a little more “certainty”. Until then, when we arrived on the circuit, we always had an adaptation phase. There, I think it will be shorter than in Austin, particularly considering what we have learned here.

You arrived in Austin without taking the tests which were scheduled a month earlier, is that a disadvantage?

We have other priorities. Today, our priority is to carefully analyze what happened there and not just on the track. We have matters to deal with following Le Mans and we will need that amount of time, so we made the decision not to run in Austin [in testing]. This is the day where we will aim for victory, podiums, perhaps we will do things differently, here we are once again in a learning phase, so it was too many burdens to assume. We must first understand, once again, what we have done, and carefully analyze what we have done in order to make better progress. Plus, we benefit from staying at home, analyzing the data.

So you have tests planned anyway?

No, not until Austin.

A quick word on the performance of your drivers, which was rather good despite Paul-Loup Chatin's small error during the first braking?

It's part of the game. Wanting to be too careful and not wanting to attack Mick [Schumacher], he put himself a little too outside. It's a bit of a shame, yes. The level of the drivers was quite excellent. He has very good averages. Mick did a very good job. We see that on average, it is very fast. He said he was quite happy with the car. The real quality of this boy is to pull the system up. Afterwards they all did a great job, that’s good.

Comments collected by Valentin Glo, in São Paulo

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