Performance in Shanghai brings optimism, but season is still challenging for the team
Esteban Ocon has warned the Alpine team that it is “too early” to claim they have overcome difficulties in the troubled 2024 campaign, despite an encouraging performance at the Chinese Grand Prix.
The Enstone-based team are yet to score points in 2024 after their car, the A524, proved heavy and lacking downforce following the car’s change of concept over the winter.
Before Shanghai, the best result was a 13th place for Ocon and teammate Pierre Gasly in Saudi Arabia and Australia respectively.
However, the team performed well in China, with both cars progressing to Q2 and Ocon coming close to taking his first point of the season, finishing in 11th place, just behind Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg.
Despite the good performance, the grand prize winner didn’t let himself get carried away. “At the moment we haven’t scored any points this season so it’s too early to say, but it’s our best result of the year with both cars,” Ocon told media including RacingNews365.
“We have to be careful what we interpret from that, and also who was in that race, a lot of things were happening and a lot of competitors were behind, so that’s another thing we need to be careful about.”
“But at the same time, I feel like it was a really strong weekend on the operational side and on my driving, so I’m happy with that. I’m a little disappointed at the same time not to be in the points, we finished 2.3s behind, which is difficult to accept given the work we’ve done.”
“We totally maximized and this was my best race of the season, and I clearly left nothing on the table.”
“Not having that reward is quite sad, but we are moving in the right direction, little by little.”
A significant problem that has plagued Alpine is that its chassis is well over the 796kg weight limit.
With this extra weight in the car, it is not possible to move ballast to help the center of gravity, and the sub-optimal Renault power unit also slows the car down.
For China, a new lighter chassis was introduced, along with a new floor, with Ocon using it before Gasly took delivery of the parts in Miami.
Despite the encouragement, Ocon felt the team’s simulation numbers could have been better than reality showed.
“It’s a very good effort, on that weight side it’s definitely an improvement,” he said, when asked by RacingNews365 about the 2kg reduction.
“Obviously, we expected more from the aerodynamic side, but we need to investigate to see if we can get the most out of it and if it brings the performance we thought it would in the simulator.”
“I think there was probably more in the simulator than we found compared to the track.”
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