Esteban Ocon says Alpine needs to be more consistent and reliable if they are to make the most of the F1 season and achieve good results after his retirement in 2023.< /strong>
The 2023 F1 season has been a strange one for Alpine’s Ocon. In fact, he finished behind teammate Pierre Gasly in the drivers’ championship. Although Gasly was in his first year with the team, he managed to beat out more experienced players who were struggling with reliability.
Despite finishing on the podium, I made some mistakes at key moments while scoring points, ruining my chances of achieving a good result with my team. He wants to improve on this lack of consistency and issues in key moments in 2024 in order to achieve more.
“The more important thing is to understand what has happened this season. There have been quite a lot of ups and downs in terms of performance and pace,” Ocon told the media. “What we need to get better is obviously consistency. We had some good opportunities that we took advantage of, like Monaco and Las Vegas, but we also had a lot of opportunities that we didn’t take, like Singapore and Austin.
“With those two guys, we probably could have finished in the top 10 in the drivers’ standings. Anything worth anything is worth it, and that obviously means we can make the most of the season. So it’s important to sort all this out for next year and start again.
“I think we had some very good things and we took advantage of some very good opportunities, but we just weren’t consistent overall. We had too many DNFs. It cost us a lot. “I think I had almost nine [seven] DNFs in total, which is probably the most of all drivers,” Ocon concluded, before going on to elaborate on the specific incident that made him think he lost. .
“If you remove the issue we have with the gearbox in Singapore, the contact with Oscar in Austin, we could have been in the top 10 in the championship, so that’s where it’s really a bit of a wasted opportunity,” continued Ocon. “If it was a weekend like Las Vegas, it would not be worth very much for us, because we were competitive.
“But on a track where we struggled that much, there is a lot for us to understand. If we can pick up something before next year, why that was, then it’s going to be a good thing. So that’s why the test was super important,” summed up Ocon.
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