On the way to Miami GP, the Alpine F1 duo, Pierre Gasly, and Esteban Ocon made a pit stop at Charlotte Motor Speedway to challenge the NASCAR drivers Chris Buescher and Brad Keselowski. Gasly and Ocon took a lap around the ROVAL in the NASCAR Next-Gen Car and set a time that Beuscher and Keselowski were challenged to beat in a Ford GT.
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Apart from racing, the 4 racers spent a lot of time together sharing experiences of their driving. Keselowski even took the opportunity to share an infamous scene from the movie – Talladega Nights – with the French drivers.
You can’t get American NASCAR drivers and French F1 drivers together without referencing the “I love crepes” scene from Talladega Nights, which is exactly what @keselowski is doing 😂@AlpineF1Team | @Castrol pic.twitter.com/NcFRGmvXOa
— RFK Racing (@RFKracing) May 2, 2023
Although who won the challenge of fastest laps is yet to be revealed as the official RFK Racing Twitter handle revealed that a full video of the challenge at the ROVAL will be released later. Although, it looks like both the F1 drivers enjoyed their time as Ocon shared a video of doing donuts on the circuit.
This morning was fun 😋🍩 pic.twitter.com/hEORxDCzc2
— Esteban Ocon (@OconEsteban) May 2, 2023
RFK hopes to maintain its momentum in NASCAR
RFK Racing recorded a positive result last time out in the Wurth 400 at Dover Motor Speedway. In the last two races, the team has been able to see both its drivers finish the race within the top 10 for the first time in almost a decade.
While Keselowski finished the race in the 8th position, his teammate Buescher crossed the line in the 9th. The building momentum has raised hopes of the team and the drivers as Keselowski said, “Had top-five in the first stage, had a pit road issue, and we recovered from that. Solid top 10 day – drove back through.”
“We’re not far off here. Just looking for a little more, and I felt like we were pretty close. Excited about that, and proud of our day – especially Chris running well. Just a strong showing,” he further added. The next NASCAR Cup Series race is scheduled to be held in the AdventHealth 400 at the Kansas Speedway.
Pierre Gasly reveals everything went wrong in Baku
From the very start of the weekend in Baku, everything went wrong for the Alpine F1 team. Neither of the drivers was able to finish within the points at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as disaster struck in the FP1 on Friday.
Ahead of the weekend, the French team had brought a few updates hoping to improve performance. But those major changes were reduced to nothing when a hose failure in Gasly’s car caused a fire leading him to retirement. Meanwhile, Ocon’s run got limited by a gearbox problem.
In the aftermath of the race, Gasly explained “Everything that could go wrong went wrong for us.” Although the team’s sporting director Alan Permane believes that while everything snowballed into a disaster last weekend, there is not a major underlying problem with the car and believes that the team will bounce back at the Miami Grand Prix.
