Esteban Ocon has blamed a mistake in qualifying and limited practice time for his surprise exit in Q1 for the 2018 German Grand Prix.
Ocon failed to escape Q1 for the first time this season, qualifying sixteenth with a lap-time of 1.13:720, over four tenths-of-a-second shy of the time needed to make it into Q2.
“It’s not a great feeling going out in Q1 but I made a slight error in qualifying today, which cost me the opportunity to continue into Q2,” said Ocon. “I didn’t manage to get the right feeling with the car and we couldn’t set it up how I wanted.”
Ocon had missed Friday’s first practice as he handed his VJM11 over to the Sahara Force India F1 Team‘s reserve driver Nicolas Latifi. Further track time was lost for Ocon courtesy of rainfall during Saturday morning’s final free practice session.
“Today’s rain during FP3 really hurt me because I had already missed a session yesterday,” Ocon continued. “There is nothing we could have done about it, but it meant we went into qualifying feeling a bit blind, with just one session of track time.
“I think Sergio showed what the car can do around here and I am confident our pace in the race is going to be strong. The battle in the midfield is going to be close, as always, but this is a good track for overtaking and I think we can push our way into the points.”
