Ocon explains safety issues that caused Monza retirement

Esteban Ocon has explained the safety issues which led to his retirement from the Italian Grand Prix.

The Frenchman was running in 15th when he pulled into the pits to retire with 12 laps until the end of the race.

It is the fifth retirement for Ocon so far this year, as Alpine has struggled to get on top of its reliability issues in races, with Monza always expected to be a struggle for the team owing to its lack of engine power.

When asked why the team decided to end his race early, Ocon told media including RacingNews365: "For safety reasons. We had the steering locking into corners and we didn't want the steering to lock completely.

"So, it was just safer to retire the car and not have more issues. That ended our weekend which has been a tough one."

Ocon: Still learning to do for Alpine

It was already a nightmare weekend for Alpine as both drivers failed to make it past Q1 in qualifying.

Teammate Pierre Gasly only managed to finish in P15 and referred to the race as a 'super painful experience' for the team.

Ocon believes there is still takeaways for the team, as they look to improve their fortunes in the final races of the season.

"I think a good one in terms of learning and looking at the difficulties that we had," said Ocon.

"There's going to be plenty of analysis and we have a week when we're not racing, so we can focus exactly on what went wrong and come back from it again."