Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly had serious contact after touching the wall after the restart for the final start in Melbourne.

The accident caused serious damage to both cars, but the Alpine factory took advantage of the three-week break between the two races to start replenishing spare parts stocks immediately.

Szafnauer acknowledged that the extra work risked delaying the Baku upgrade, but in the end, the team was able to stick to the original schedule and fully test the new floor components by the end of the week.

He insisted it was one of the positives drawn from what has been a nightmare race for the team.

“A lot of points are begging and if that happens, like with two races left and you’re fighting for fourth or third or fifth, then it has a bigger impact,” he told F1 Nation podcast.

“But with 20 races to go, three good things came out of that race. One, we were able to keep up with (Carlos) Sainz’s Ferrari despite the help of DRS, even without DRS. Stay ahead of Lance (Aston with Stroll) in. So those were the positives for that race.

“Then another big positive is that the whole operation at Enstone came together as soon as the accident happened. They didn’t wait to report this damage, that damage, and we had to replace these suspension parts or the front wing.

“They saw what was happening and immediately started diverting some manufacturing resources to making more spare parts, but didn’t lose the upgrades planned for Baku. It was a huge effort from everyone here.

“So we’re going to Baku with the planned upgrade. It’s probably an hour or two of uncertainty before everyone gets together because you definitely have to make remaking spare parts a priority for the upgrade.

Pierre Gasly, Alpine A523

Photography: Glenn Dunbar/ motorsport pictures

“But now we are heading to Baku with planned upgrades and ample spare parts after the crash.

“It’s no secret to tell everyone that we’ve done an upgrade to the floorboards, we’ve got a brand new floorboard. That’s it, there are other little details, but it’s mostly the floorboards.”

Of the two crashed chassis, he said: “They’re fine because they’re repairable. So we didn’t lose one.”

Szafnauer insisted that the damages bill did not affect the team’s 2023 budget because there is a subsidy for the situation.

“We plan to spend a percentage of the budget cap on collision damage,” he said.

“We look back in history and we know what the average year of crash damage is and how much you’re paying for it.

“Having an accident like this early on means you’ve blown some of your accident damage budget ahead of time.

“So at this point, it has zero impact on the programs we’ve done, the upgrades we’ve brought in, so so far, no consequences.”

Szafnauer said the team had accepted it was a racing accident, noting that both Ocon and Gasly initially believed they were to blame.

“They’re all kind of remorseful,” he said. “Both of them started off thinking maybe that was my fault, maybe that was my fault. So when that happens, when you have 50-50, you know they didn’t see it coming.

“They were both, ‘If I hadn’t left, this wouldn’t have happened, if I hadn’t tried to walk past him, this wouldn’t have happened.’ So it was about 50-50.”

On the team’s view on the clash, he said: “We just have to look at what happened logically and see what could have been done better to avoid it.

“But it was a racing accident.”