Ocon sorry for ‘not acceptable’ F1 fan treatment and reflects on lucky escape

Second practice was heavily delayed after the opening session was abandoned after just eight minutes of running when Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz struck a loose water valve cover. 

Fans had stuck around for several hours in the hope of finally seeing some action in FP2 but were asked to leave the grandstands shortly before the session finally got underway. 

Ocon said he felt sorry for fans who spent their hard-earned money on tickets, only to be removed due to “logical considerations”. 

“Obviously I’m feeling sorry for the fans out there,” the Frenchman said. 

“Hopefully we’ll catch back up on the show and have some good show for them tomorrow because they haven’t seen a car run today and that is obviously not acceptable.”

Ocon badly damaged his Alpine when he ran over the dislodged drain cover but admitted he felt lucky to avoid a more serious accident. 

“I was lucky that the session got delayed because my car was very damaged in FP1,” he explained. “So a bit of a crazy-emotion day, I would say.

“Luckily I’m fine, as well, because it could have easily come through the car, the object.”

AlphaTauri’s Daniel Ricciardo also shared his sympathy towards the fans and said FP2 initially didn’t feel worth it. 

“The grandstand situation, obviously that’s a bummer. But I guess if we didn’t do the FP2, then it probably would’ve got scrapped and we just would have gone into FP3,” the Australian said. 

“So at least like this, maybe the fans got to, at the very least, watch it on TV. We try to be positive, but it’s obviously a difficult situation. 

“But I also don’t want to shit on the sport. It’s the first time here, it’s a massive project and things unfortunately happened. I know no one wanted them to, but I guess they did the best they could with what they had.”