As if being a Formula 1 driver wasn’t cool enough… Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon got to hang out – and have a kickabout – with French footballing legend, World Cup winner and former Real Madrid player and manager Zinedine Zidane. Back of the net!
WORDS OLEG KARPOV PICTURES ALPINE
It’s a chilly winter morning. There’s a bit of a hustle and bustle outside gate 28 of Madrid’s biggest stadium, the legendary Santiago Bernabéu, which is currently being renovated. The presence of a few police cars and TV crews suggests this is no ordinary day. At a quarter to ten, Esteban Ocon pulls up to the entrance to the Real Madrid museum in a green Alpine A110S.
Yet the F1 driver is more of a guest than a protagonist today. A few selfies later, he joins GP Racing in the huddle to wait for an even bigger sports star – the man who, as player and manager, has won four Champions League trophies and three La Liga titles with the team that owns this very stadium.
Zinedine Zidane arrives a few minutes later in another A110. The purple hoodie grants him anonymity for only a few seconds. His distinctive look and walk can’t be disguised. “Zizou!” shouts a group of teenagers who happen to be nearby and, as he makes his way towards the F1 driver waiting for him no more than a dozen metres away, Zidane manages to attract a swarm of passers-by and random visitors who happened to have bought a ticket to the Real Madrid museum at just the right moment.
The crowd, which also includes a handful of Alpine junior drivers, effectively ‘boxes out’ the security guards at the entrance. And Pierre Gasly, who has cut short his holiday to fly to Madrid to meet Zidane, now makes his way through that crowd with a look not dissimilar to that of the schoolboy next to him trying to get a selfie with a legend.
“You know, one of the reasons I chose the number 10 in F1 is because of him,” he tells GP Racing later. “I also won the Formula Renault 2.0 title in 2013 with that number, but yeah, as a kid I obviously looked up to Zizou, and when I played football I always wanted to have the number 10 on my back.
“I have a lot of memories of sitting in front of the TV and watching the national team games, and he was the captain for quite a few years. I have this very clear, actually quite sad image of his last World Cup in 2006. I remember I was in Douvrin fo
