Ocon: Alpine not yet fast enough on “pure pace” for F1 podium

Under the Renault guise, the team scored three podiums in 2020 on its way to fifth place in the constructors’ championship.

After a slow start to the season in 2021, the Enstone-based outfit enjoyed strong performances at Portimao and Barcelona to get its season back on track.

Ocon and Fernando Alonso finished seventh and eighth in Portugal, while an unsuccessful one-stop strategy in Spain meant the Frenchman didn't convert fifth on the grid into a big points haul. 

When asked about Alpine’s chances of finishing on the podium this season, Ocon said: “I think anything is possible in the race. Last year when Daniel did the podium there’s been some things happening in the race, when I got the podium in Bahrain there have been some things happening in the race. 

“On pure pace and if everybody is on track, no we are not fast enough for the podium yet, but we will push to make it happen as we did last year. So it’s not going to be easy but anything can happen in these crazy years that we are living in.”

Ocon is hopeful he will continue his impressive run of qualifying performances in Monaco this weekend, given that overtaking is very difficult.

“Until we put the car there and we do the qualifying we will not know exactly, but I think looking at our performance in qualifying we should be in good shape in Monaco,” Ocon added.

“I hope that we are going to be able to perform as good, so I think we can give a fight to the Ferraris and the other cars around in qualifying. I’m pretty confident. The place we have to focus - the race - in Monaco it’s hard to overtake so it’s less of a critical point, but yes I think we are a bit slower than Ferrari and a bit slower than McLaren at the moment on pure pace in the race.”