"Wonderful bit of leadership there": Esteban Ocon draws praise from former McLaren driver for his message to Alpine

Former McLaren driver David Coulthard has praised Alpine driver Esteban Ocon after the Frenchman gave a fighting talk to the team despite finishing P19 at the Bahrain GP qualifying.

It was a horrible session for the Endstone-based outfit as it finished P19 and P20 with Ocon finishing ahead of his teammate Pierre Gasly. Despite the alarming grid slot, Alpine was only a second behind the best time in Q1 and a tenth of a second from making the Q2 session.

On his team radio after the end of his qualifying session, Esteban Ocon showered encouragement to the team and said:

"Only Round 1. We keep going and we keep pushing. There is a race tomorrow as well. I got faith in you guys."

Former McLaren driver David Coulthard, who was on commentary, praised the 27-year-old's leadership skills and stated:

"Wonderful bit of leadership there from Ocon. All credit for being mature enough to see that there is a bigger picture here and actually being a second away is no way near as bad as the position on the grid and they can develop back from there."

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Esteban Ocon analyzes his 'difficult' qualifying in the Bahrain GP

Esteban Ocon stated that he and Alpine expected to have a 'difficult' qualifying session at the Sakhir International Circuit on Friday evening.

As per F1.com, the Frenchman said that despite the result, the team had made improvements to the car from the pre-season testing.

“We expected it was going to be difficult coming into Qualifying and that proved to be the case. It’s important that we realize where we need to improve, which is something we identified very early on with this car. As I said on the radio, I’ve got faith and confidence in the team to keep progressing," he said.

"We improved the car all the way through testing and all the way through the Practice sessions so far this weekend, though, it was not quite enough to progress into the second part of Qualifying," Ocon added.

Esteban Ocon was hopeful that the A524 would be closer to the rest of the grid than in the qualifying session as he would want to avoid finishing on the last row of the grid.

"Tomorrow will be a long race and I think we’ll be closer to the others than on short runs. We’ll look to execute a clean race, try to progress up the field, and see where we end up,” he concluded.