Ocon keen for 'maximum car part changes' in bid to “reset” at F1 British GP

After starting the season with four points finishes in five races, Alpine rewarded Ocon with a new long-term deal. 

Since signing that new deal ahead of the French Grand Prix, Ocon’s form has plummeted, failing to progress into Q3 at the last three races. 

While Ocon’s performances have dipped, teammate Fernando Alonso has been a regular Q3 and top ten contender in the last four races.

The Frenchman was forced to retire prematurely last time out at the Austrian Grand Prix after being sandwiched between Kimi Raikkonen and one of the Haas drivers, destroying the front-right suspension on his car.

“Well I think it is a little bit the consequence of starting further back unfortunately,” Ocon said after the race in Austria. “We know starting back there is always more incidents and contact and stuff happening, when you are not correctly positioned. 

“Obviously disappointed but I think we have to turn the page, we have to restart from zero, reset, prepare Silverstone the best way we can, it’ll be starting already next week, but yeah, let’s forget those last two weekends, regroup, and come back stronger at Silverstone.”

Ocon is adamant that there is a deficit with his Alpine car relative to Alonso but he remains unsure of what exactly it is.

“Well, it is difficult to answer to your question,” Ocon added. “We see a few things, and we are seeing some deficit, but it is hard to place the finger on exactly what it is. As I said also we don’t want to give information on what it could be, because it is already hard enough to put the finger on it, so I don’t want to place myself onto that, but we will start from fresh at Silverstone, change as much parts as we can on the car, and hopefully come back much stronger. 

“But for sure to be one second slower on the first run compared to Fernando, it is too big, the difference, so there is definitely something that was not working right and that we need to understand.”

The former Force India driver says he still needs to discuss with his team to determine how many parts will be changed on his car ahead of the British Grand Prix next weekend.

“Yeah exactly, that’s what we are going to obviously find out next week, the discussions we’ll have with the guys,” Ocon explained. “I see we are discussing about changing some parts already, to just restart fresh, so we’ll see exactly what is the plan, that’s going to be defined next week. 

“But yeah we are only Sunday, so there’s still a few more days to think about it, what we can do, and restart as fresh as we can be. Because obviously the deficit and the performance we had was not good enough this weekend and last weekend.”