F1| Canadian GP | Ocon: “ I feel slightly disappointed as more was probably on the table today in those conditions”
After expressing his happiness for teammate Fernando Alonso’s P2 result in qualifying, Esteban Ocon believed there was more left on the table and revealed his disappointment with himself after qualifying P7.
Esteban Ocon missed out on the top five of qualifying in Montreal by two spots in P7. The Frenchman expressed his support and contentment for teammate Fernando Alonso’s exceptional P2 result after the qualifying session. However, after the tricky wet conditions during qualifying, Ocon revealed his disappointment with not extracting as much performance from the A522.
“First of all, I’m delighted for the team and for Fernando today. He deserves to be starting on the front row after driving very a strong weekend so far. On my side, I feel slightly disappointed as more was probably on the table today in those conditions,” Ocon said.
“We weren’t able to extract the performance that we know is there and I’ve felt a little bit off the pace all weekend. As always, we’ll continue the hard work with the engineers to find the marginal gains. Nevertheless, we have both cars in good positions on the grid for tomorrow and we’re in contention to score strong points for the team, which is most important.”
Disappointment aside, Ocon focused on the positives with the team and on the strong pace that the A522 delivered for Alonso.
“I'm not pleased on my side, I'm delighted for the team. You know, I think it's been awesome to see, you know, the car up there and Fernando, you know, he's been driving brilliantly since the beginning of the weekend. So it's great to watch.
“I think, you know, it shows the progress that we are doing as a team. But yes, since the begining of the weekend we’re a bit on the backfoot obviously, from where we start, you know, we can fight we can, we can race and hopefully, we can convert all these big points that we have for the team for for tomorrow.
With different weather conditions expected for the race, Ocon expects a big fight and a tricky start to the race. The 25-year-old driver is also concentrated on scoring maximum points for Alpine who currently sits in fifth place behind McLaren in the constructors' championship.
“Yeah, well, hopefully we can you know move forward even in the race. You know, it's going to be a big fight, the conditions are going to be completely different it’s going to be different challenges.
“The start is always quite tricky here. But yeah, hopefully we can you know be scoring good points, as I said for the team and make the difference, you know, in the constructor’s championship as well.
