Esteban Ocon comes clean on the image of him being a bad teammate against the likes of Sergio Perez and Fernando Alonso

Esteban Ocon feels that the image of him being a bad team player has been created by blowing things out of proportion. The French driver made his F1 debut in 2016, and his first full season in the sport was in 2017 at Force India alongside Sergio Perez.

Esteban Ocon impressed everyone very early in his career, and in just his first season with the team, he started to become more and more competitive against Sergio Perez. Eventually, the two drivers were competing for the same piece of tarmac every weekend, arguably leading to increased tensions between them.

As a result, there were multiple races where the two ended up colliding, and Force India had to intervene before things got worse.

In a chat with Motorsport last week, Esteban Ocon addressed the widespread perception of him being a difficult teammate to work with and said:

"I don't know exactly why. I think things have probably been blown out of proportion at times. Yeah, there's been some incidents, for sure, and things that I would have liked, you know... to have gone differently at times."

Claiming that he has always tried to maintain an amicable dynamic with his teammates, Ocon added:

"When I look back, I've tried my best to work well with the team and my team-mate, and I think every time we've achieved the goals together with what the car could have achieved – whether it's Sergio, Daniel [Ricciardo], Fernando [Alonso] or Pierre [Gasly]. I've worked well with all of them, to be fair. Yes, there have been incidents I would have liked to have been different, but over time, it's been very little."

Following a tough run against Sergio Perez, Esteban Ocon also had heightened tensions with Fernando Alonso and Pierre Gasly at Alpine.

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Esteban Ocon addresses the multiple collisions with Sergio Perez

Esteban Ocon's stint with Sergio Perez as a teammate saw the French driver get involved in as many as five collisions with his teammate. While out of these incidents, the driver was only responsible once and the other four were due to Perez, many in the F1 circle felt Ocon was to blame.

Talking about his collisions with the Mexican, the French driver said that the collisions were a result of the two continuously fighting over the same piece of tarmac. He said,

"I do remember them all, for sure. I've always tried to do my best in the car, and get the maximum out of everything I had in my hands. It's never a good thing to have contact with your team-mate, and that's not something I ever want."

Further recalling one of the incidents between him and Perez, Ocon said:

"But yeah, it happened a couple of times because we were racing very close, and a little bit on our own – because that first year in 2017, we were between sixth and eighth most of the time, and that was us [always] on the same row of the grid."

Esteban Ocon will be teamed up with Ollie Bearman this season at Haas in what would be a combination of an experienced driver combining with a young upstart. It will be interesting to see how the driver takes on the challenge of being a team leader at his new squad.