Esteban Ocon is not thinking much on being dubbed as the de facto leader at Alpine post the departure of Fernando Alonso.
Considering that Ocon has been longer at Alpine than newcomer Pierre Gasly, unofficially the Frenchman could be taken as the de facto leader of the F1 team especially in the early days as the latter settles in with the outfit and also in the car.
Even though Gasly has host of experience, but it is not of Alpine. Despite that, he has done well so far with two points finishes and a strong third outing in Australia which ended in despair. But Ocon is not looking at the ‘leader’ position per se.
He notes it is a teamwork and not a situation were he gets to call the shots. He is focusing on his own job while working together with Gasly. “I’m obviously focusing on myself and you know, the job I have to do with the team, in a way that we have to develop this car, understand the issues that we have, and I’m very focused on doing that,” said Ocon.
“So I’m doing you know, the same job that I was doing last year, but obviously, yes, we are together with Pierre on most of the things that we do. And at the moment, it is going really well. And we hope we can keep working the way we are at the moment.
“There are some interesting topics when we are in meetings and we are discovering things every time that we that we are together at the factory and on track. So, yeah, it’s quite interesting, so hopefully it can keep going that way,” summed up Ocon.
Here’s Otmar Szafnauer on Pierre Gasly needing couple more races
Here’s the Alpine pair on race-ending collision