Ocon hopes future upgrades can cure Alpine's F1 car weakness

The Frenchman held onto to finish ninth in the principality, fending off Alfa Romeo’s Antonio Giovinazzi for much of the race.

After impressing in Portimao and Barcelona, Alpine looked to have made a step forward after a slow start to the season.

Assessing the French team’s performance across the Monaco weekend, Ocon said the team knows where it is struggling but didn’t disclose where or what types of corners.

“We are just finding some issues that we have sometimes in some tracks,'' Ocon said in Monaco. “Some tracks are quite transparent and we manage to overperform those issues and we managed to go around it with setup. 

“But for some races those issues are quite strong but with anything we do we managed to erase some of it but we don’t manage to kill all of it. This weekend has been one of those where we didn’t manage to kill all of it and it made us lose a bit of time compared to Portimao and Barcelona where we didn’t have so many of those issues. 

“We know we have them in the car and we’ve pointed out exactly where it is so it is up to us to fix that with future developments hopefully.”

Ocon added: “I think it’s not as simple as low-speed corners or high-speed corners really anymore. I think it’s all very tight together for everyone. It depends on the tracks, the combination of corners and also depends what tyre compounds we have and all that. 

“It’s a mixture of a lot of different things. We know the issues we are having.”

Looking ahead to this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, executive director Marcin Budkowski confirmed Alpine is bringing a small upgrade package to the race.

“Baku is also a street circuit, but with a significantly lower downforce level than Monaco because of the long straights and high-speed sections,” Budkowski explained. “We have a small upgrade package, as per our development plan, so it's been a busy week at the factory to have everything ready. 

“All the while, we've conducted rigorous analysis and simulations to make sure we go to Baku with the best possible understanding of what our issues were in Monaco to ensure they don't affect us again.”