Among the numerous and spectacular battles that the Saudi Arabian GP gave us, there is certainly the one between Ocon and Alonso, which, in that moment, had everyone worried. The two teammates, who risked contact even on more than one occasion, ended their internal duel with the entry of the Safety Car, caused by Latifi.

At the end of the race, Ocon took home a godd sixth position, while Alonso was forced to stop due to technical problems. However, there was no controversy between the two drivers, on the contrary they underlined the beauty of their battle, saying there is mutual respect between them.

“When you fight it’s the same as in karting, you lose time.” said Ocon.

“It’s always a privilege to race with Fernando,” – the Frenchman added - “It’s going to be close all year. Let’s see how it will go. But we race fair and as the team decided for us to race, so there is no drama.”

Alonso also said that “everything was fine”.

“We battled in Bahrain already in the first stint, even though we had a different strategy there,” he explained.

“Here we had the same strategy but for whatever reason my car felt faster this weekend in qualifying and the race so I could overtake and pull away a little bit.”

“I felt that my car was in the window, working a little bit better today, so I had the opportunity to overtake and pull away a little bit. The main threat was Bottas. It was not easy to keep him behind.”

An inch-perfect fight between @alo_oficial and @OconEsteban 😱#SaudiArabianGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/O3i4Caa7Mc

— Formula 1 (@F1) March 28, 2022

Szafnauer, Alpine’s team principal, commented on the happenings, saying that both cars lost more time than what they thought they would've lost, because these 2022 cars aren’t really good to battle - on track - for a long time

“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,” the American said.

“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 regulations.

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

“That’s exactly the type of thing we have to look at,” - he said, referring to who blamed the drivers for wasting precious time, in a battle between teammates – “When do we tell them to not start overtaking each other because it does cost you time?"

“That is exactly the trade-off,” he concluded.