Esteban Ocon 'not satisfied' with Alpine's performance: "They were too fast"

Esteban Ocon hopes for Alpine's A523 to be faster as he is not satisfied with the current pace and the competition they had in Saudi Arabia. The Frenchman feels that the team cannot be satisfied with this pace as well.

Alpine have only performed fairly well in the first two rounds of the 2023 F1 season. While Esteban Ocon was P8 in Jeddah, his teammate finished P9. This was the same position Pierre Gasly had in Bahrain as well, but that race was hardly competitive for Ocon after the penalties he was showered on with.

The team currently seems to be the 5th fastest on the grid, and though it is okay, Ocon feels that there needs to be more pace to bring in competition. In Jeddah, both drivers went all out for a competition and even battled each other briefly after the safety car restart. But Ocon was unimpressed as Autosport quoted him:

"No, we can't be satisfied with where we are at the moment. There are a couple of teams that have improved massively over the others."

Putting Alpine in the context of other teams, the Frenchman believes that there has been a major performance upgrade for other teams and hence it is possible for them as well. Esteban Ocon said:

"It shows that it is possible, and we need to keep fighting, we need to keep digging, keep thinking, and that's the atmosphere inside the team as well. But no, we can't be satisfied with where we finished today."

As mentioned, the team is currently fifth, which puts them one below where they were in the previous season.

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Esteban Ocon thought about holding up the Ferraris

Ferrari had a very hard time during the race in Jeddah. After the safety car restart, both cars were stuck on P6 and P7 as they couldn't catch up with Mercedes. Charles Leclerc started the race from P12 after a grid penalty and had an impressive race up to that point.

However, as Esteban Ocon revealed, he was expecting to hold up the team while racing, but it wasn't possible, as they were 'too fast.' He said:

"We thought at some point it was going to be possible to hold the Ferraris, but they were too fast, and they pulled away in that middle phase of the second stint."

After the tough weekend Esteban Ocon had in Bahrain, this was quite an improvement to finish with points. Looking at the season up ahead, the team will surely be expecting to improve with the upgrade package and developments to perhaps make their place in the upper midfield.