Esteban Ocon was not too happy with how the decisions were taken in F1 British GP, as he feels Alpine needs to get everything perfect to score.
After starting on a high on the onset of the triple-header, Alpine ended on a low note in British GP at Silverstone. Pierre Gasly didn’t even get to start the race after encountering gearbox issue while driving at the back of the field due to power unit penalty.
Ocon’s race was undone after a wrong strategy call which caught out Sergio Perez and Charles Leclerc as well. They pitted for intermediate tyres at the first spell of rain which didn’t last long and that already set them back in the order.
In fact, Ocon feels the soft tyre choice was already a wrong one to begin with. That in itself set them back and the calls of intermediate change only made it worse. The Frenchman was pretty disappointed with the team after the race.
“There was nothing brave about that race, everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong,” said Ocon to media. “We took every wrong decision from before the race, to on the grid, to during the race, every call or [decision] were the wrong ones, so there is not that much more to say.
“If we go into details on that, basically, there were some drops of rain, it started to get tricky in Turns 1 and 2, and I thought: ‘if the next lap it stays like this, it is going to be wet.’ So I asked the team if it was going to rain more and they said: ‘yes, it will rain more’, so I said: ‘okay, we box if it rains more’ and the team said okay.
“I exited the pits and it was bright sunshine, so I don’t know what to do anymore. It has not gone our way at all, it is unbelievable, I have never seen something like this in my career. It has been insane. I can’t give you an answer but, yeah, when the track was suited for slicks we were on the inters, when the track was suited for inters we were on the slicks. When the track was suited for low downforce, we were on the high, and many more unfortunately. Not much to take away unfortunately,” summed up Ocon.
Considering the weekends has been, Ocon reckons Alpine has to be perfect in all departments to excel and score against its rivals. He hopes the weekend in Hungary will be like that, while praising the progress Haas has made – the team with whom he is linked to join in 2025.
“We have just turned the page, and will go again in Budapest which is a very good track, we hope to be back to where we should be,” said Ocon. “We need to optimise everything for us to be able to fight with the other guys, we need to be perfect on every single decision, optimising the car set-up, because otherwise, we are outside of the Top 10.
“For a weekend like Budapest, we should have the capability of fighting for good things, but there is no guarantee after this weekend, because it really shows that we need to do everything perfect. They’ve [Haas] been improving a lot which is for sure an example for every other team, how they’re doing it at the moment,” summed up Ocon.
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