A downbeat Esteban Ocon is searching for the positives from a difficult 2018 Australian Grand Prix after finishing twelfth.
Neither Ocon, who started fifteenth, nor his team-mate Sergio Perez finished in the points for the Sahara Force India F1 Team. Ocon though, took solace in a brief battle with the recovering Valtteri Bottas.
“Not an easy race today,” said Ocon. “It was very difficult to overtake and even though I managed to jump ahead of Lance [Stroll] on the first lap, everybody quickly spread out until the safety car.
“I had a fight with Bottas for a while and after the safety car restart I was close to making a move on Sergio.
Continuing a trend seen in recent years, Ocon points out that Force India performed better on Sunday than in qualifying, but says that the team are still missing some performance.
“We certainly had better race pace compared to our qualifying pace, but we are just missing some performance to be up there in the top ten at the moment.
“Things can turn around quickly in Formula One and we will keep pushing over the next two weeks to bring something extra to Bahrain.”
