The French carmaker’s sporting director saw first-hand the challenges Alpine faced as they “snowballed out of control” over the weekend after Pierre Gasly’s car caught fire on Friday.

In the event the team wanted a trouble-free run to assess the new floor update, it had an engine swap, crash fixes, setup changes, pit exit starts and then a GP that Esteban Ocon narrowly missed on the last dramatic pitlane. Alpine left the race without scoring any points.

All of this drama comes on top of an intense new sprint weekend format that includes qualifying, sprints and a grand prix on Friday and Saturday.

Asked how this weekend compared to previous sprint weekends, Permane said: “I can’t compare this weekend to any other weekend. It’s been so crazy and fraught and difficult to be honest. It doesn’t feel like Any other weekend.”

Alpine’s problems started in the first free practice when Gasly’s hydraulic leak caused an engine fire, cutting his run short. Then he crashed at the start of qualifying.

Team-mate Esteban Ocon’s movement was limited in FP1 due to a gearbox problem, which has further troubled the team in finding the right setup ahead of qualifying.

In the end, Ocon’s car was pulled from the parc ferme on Saturday for a setup change amid fears his boards would wear out.

With all that in mind, Permane said: “You need to start well prepared and then have a good weekend. We didn’t have a single car in FP1. It snowballed out of control from there.”

Permane applauded the hard work of Alpine’s mechanics during the weekend’s dramatic race as they now endure the added complexity of back-to-back rounds.

Alpine A523’s Pierre Gasly pulls over and climbs out of car due to fire on board

Photography: Zak Mauger / motorsport pictures

“They worked really hard this weekend,” Permane said. “They did a fantastic job with Pierre’s engine change. It’s going to have a knock-on effect that you (the media) don’t see.

“They arrive here on Wednesday and build the cars, but we also build spare parts: spare gearboxes, spare engines and so on.

“When you use all of these on Friday, they have to stay late on Friday night because there is no curfew on Friday night on the sprint weekend because the cars are in the parc ferme. So they stay until 10 or 11 point, replenish the spares they just used, and make sure we have the engine and transmission ready for when we do the next one.

“So, it was a real double whammy for them. They had a very grueling Friday.”

He added: “The next thing they have to do is a grueling 14-hour flight to Miami and some of them will go straight to work on Tuesday morning.

“It’s not easy how you recover from that, especially going straight into another game. But we’ll do our best.

“Some people will have a day off on Tuesday, no doubt enjoying the sun and relaxing. We will do what we can for those who work long hours here (in Baku) and have to work on Tuesday. Four let them go.

“It at least gives them some time off to have a meal and a beer or whatever it is that people do to recover.”