Ocon Cautions Alpine F1 Against Over-Celebrating Point

Esteban Ocon warns Alpine F1 to temper celebrations despite their recent scoring in the championship.

Esteban Ocon does not hide his satisfaction with the progress made by Alpine F1 since the start of the season, but the French driver refuses to overly celebrate a tenth place achieved during the sixth race of the season.

“We do not want to celebrate too loudly,” Ocon stated. “Obviously, it’s only a top 10. But considering that we were 19th and 20th a few races ago in Bahrain, I think we can draw some positives from this race.”

“The small steps we are taking right now obviously feel good because the team has stayed motivated while trying to understand what’s happening with our pace, and I would say the weekend was anything but calm.”

“However, this makes it two races where we’ve closed in on the points: 11th in Shanghai, 10th in Miami—we’re in the points, and it’s really great to come away from this weekend with some kind of reward.”

The Frenchman is relieved he didn’t have to hold on too long, as he believes Nico Hülkenberg would have overtaken him: “I think we are always better in qualifying than in the race. I think if you add another 10 laps, Nico would probably have been very close and fighting with us again.”

“I had to fight my way through this race. It was crazy how many maneuvers I had to make, and the fact that we were struggling with straight-line speed didn’t help much. So, it wasn’t a perfect race setup from Saturday, but we were still rewarded.”