Esteban Ocon ensured his points scoring run continued in last Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix, even though the Frenchman acknowledged it was not such a strong performance from the Alpine F1 Team in the principality as they had in previous races.
Ocon managed to finish ninth on Sunday, jumping Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN’s Antonio Giovinazzi during the pit stops, although both drivers were leapfrogged by Lance Stroll when the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team driver took a different approach to his race strategy.
The Frenchman says Alpine will learn a lot from their troubled weekend in Monaco, and he feels there is a lot more to come from the team in the upcoming races.
“It’s been a positive race for us today with ninth place and our fourth points-scoring finish in a row,” said Ocon. “We managed to overtake Giovinazzi on our strategy – thanks to a great pit-stop from the team – but we missed out on Stroll who was very quick on the harder tyres.
“I’m happy to score points again, especially after defending so much at the end. I think we can take some good things from this race on a weekend that was not easy for us. We’ve learnt a lot, we’ve been taught a few things, which will only help us moving forward. I’m sure there’s more to come from us.”
“It was a disappointing weekend as we didn’t score points” – Fernando Alonso
Team-mate Fernando Alonso was far from thrilled with his weekend in Monaco, with the Spaniard failing to break into the points after a lacklustre Qualifying performance left him with too much work to do.
Alonso started down in seventeenth after finding himself eliminated in Q1 on Saturday afternoon, and despite making up a couple of places at the start and capitalising on the retirements of Charles Leclerc and Valtteri Bottas, he couldn’t better thirteenth at the chequered flag.
“It was a disappointing weekend as we didn’t score points,” said Alonso. “As a team, we were expecting more coming into this one. My race wasn’t too bad, starting seventeenth and finishing thirteenth, overtaking two cars on the first lap with some risks.
“Our second stint was quite long on the Softs, but they seemed to work quite well. I am satisfied with the race but starting so far back in Monaco is always difficult and we need to improve for Baku.”
