Alpine rider Esteban Ocon described Saturday as a difficult day in Baku, and he also spoke about his crash, which had an impact on the championship battle (which triggered the yellow flag phase that hindered Lando Norris), after qualifying.
The French driver’s unlucky weekend continued with the much-talked-about crash due to the yellow flag incident: Ocon was hampered by an MGU-H problem in the first practice, and his car stopped on the track due to a fuel system failure in the last.
“It’s been a very tough weekend so far… that’s for sure” – he declared to the official website of F1 after qualifying. “Until now, I had almost no circles. I ran maybe six creditable laps over the course of the entire weekend. So, the fact that we had to miss the first and second free practice made our weekend extremely complicated” – he added.
Due to the lost time, it was naturally more difficult to set up the car, and Ocon was particularly dissatisfied with its balance. “I went to the time trial without laps or settings. The car was difficult to drive, not the way I like it” he said.
Esteban Ocon (Photo: XPB)
It is therefore not surprising that the Frenchman put everything on the line on the last fast lap when he hit the wall with his left rear wheel at the exit of turn four. After that, he slipped into the pit at turn six, then drove back to the pits at a slow pace – Norris caught up with him at this point and had to slow down due to the yellow flag (the second place in the championship table was thus eliminated in Q1).
“Obviously I pushed the limits on the last lap and hit the wall. That’s it. I improved on that lap, but it would still have been very difficult to advance” explained Ocon, who finished the qualification in 20th place.
In the end, he will be able to start the race from a better position due to the disqualification of teammate Pierre Gasly. According to Ocon, starting from the last row, after the difficult lead-up, to score points, you will primarily need luck. “We saved some fresh tires for the race, just in case something happened. We will try to do our best and hope to have a clean race.”
