This European leg of the Formula 1 Championship seems to be opening on a better start for Esteban Ocon, in a season where he had only managed to score one point in Miami.
Sprint weekend here in Austria started out with a P8 ahead of his teammate Pierre Gasly in the quali shootout, only to become a P11 in Saturday’s race.
“The start wasn’t the best and then we didn’t have the best grip, straight line speed was lacking a lot. In Turn 3 and Turn 4 in the lap after we got passed by Kevin and Lance. I think we could have probably finished in front of Lance because we had more pace at the end than him,” he told media after quali.
“But compared to Kevin, he was very fast. We hope that tomorrow that won’t be the case. I was on a very used set of tyres, because I had a puncture at the end of the sprint qualifying, so I was also down on performance compared to that. But with the same tyres tomorrow, hopefully that will be a different case.”
A much tighter fight was on for the main qualifying on Saturday afternoon, where Ocon made it to Q3 just on the line: 1:05.883s for him, 1:05.289 for Daniel Ricciardo behind in P11.
“We just got through by half a tenth or something like that, so the margin is extremely tight and to be honest we had more margin yesterday in Sprint qualifying than today,” he commented.
“Today was very very close between all the cars and we had to put 3 sets to go through to Q3 and that’s why we couldn’t fight with Nico in Q3, because his best lap time in Q3 was actually slower than mine in Q2, so we could have competed I would say, if we would have had a new set but we did not come through.”
Still a significant step ahead for Alpine, who debuted in Bahrain with an overweight A524 that seemed to be the slowest on the grid.
Since then they got down to work in Enstone and came up with upgrade packages all through the first half of the season that made the car lighter and more competitive.
Better performance that it is still to be understood where exactly is coming from, although Ocon is convinced a good part in these last few races where he has managed to progress onto Q3 is also a matter of circuit’s characteristics.
“We are still unsure why that is, we keep trying to optimize the car every single time, get the maximum out of it.”
“We understood of course a lot more than earlier in the year, but I think part of that is rewarding the good job that we are doing as a team, but also the track characteristics we had in the last two races.”
“Silverstone could be one of those again, but I’m waiting to see when we are gonna go a bit in the rougher tracks, with more straights and stuff, where we are exactly.”
“We have clues, obviously. We see track characteristics where things are working better for us as well, but I think if we go back to Bahrain or to Canada, we struggle as well in qualifying. We would probably be a little bit better than where we were there, but I don’t think we would be in Q3.”
Just as much as it is still a mystery the differences between his car and the one of his teammate Pierre Gasly.
“There are still differences across cars. I think we are touching points on how to make mine work this time,” he said.
“I think it’s taken very seriously by the team on why that is, because we’ve been changing parts across cars and we still see the difference that we have. Hopefully soon we will be on top of it and we will understand where it comes from.”
