The Frenchman was baffled as he could only manage 17th in final free practice before managing to finish 12th in Saturday’s standings. However, it will move up two places thanks to penalties for changes to engine components from Carlos Sainz and Kevin Magnussen, who will start from the bottom of the grid.
Esteban Ocon’s teammate, two-time world champion Fernando Alonso, showed the car’s real potential after taking a valuable 7th position, prompting the Frenchman to say it was “a disappointing qualifying”.
“It was terrible, I have to say,” he told Motorsport.com. “It’s not where we were supposed to finish, I think the car has the potential to be sixth or seventh, so we’re not happy, but we’ve been struggling with a very inconsistent car for a couple of races now.
“We were last in FP3, which is not possible at this point, that we are fifth in Austria and then that happens here, it is impossible. It is not where we want to be, it is a difficult problem to fix, but for sure there is something that we have to find yet,” Ocon said.
Asked if it was just that lap time or if it was something else, he said: “I’m sorry, for example, when I had a lot of oversteer at the end of the session, I couldn’t control the rear, and the settings were very similar. between the cars, so it shouldn’t behave like that.
“I think the updates and everything we’ve brought is working as we intend, but we’re on a performance roller coaster for several weekends so that’s not possible,” the Frenchman continued.
“It worked extremely well in Austria, at Silverstone we were nowhere and although we finished in the points it wasn’t where we wanted. In Canada it’s the same, so sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, it’s hard to understand,” Ocon said. .
Last year, the French driver had a continuous problem in his car that was resolved by changing the chassis , and he admitted that something similar could have happened: “We’ll see, but yes, we’ve had setbacks in the past, we’ve seen broken parts that we didn’t we managed to distinguish during two or three great prizes”.
“Clearly we cannot allow that to happen if we want to fight for fourth place in the championship,” said Ocon , who is still optimistic about the race. “We’re going to start in the top 10, so that’s a good thing, and hopefully we can gain a few more positions to keep it, but we’ll have a performance shortfall.”
Do you want to read our news before anyone else and for free? Follow us here on our Telegram channel and you won’t miss a thing. All the information, at your fingertips!
