Esteban Ocon admitted that he hit the wall twice but kept "pedal to the metal" on his way to qualifying sixth for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. Alpine has capitalised on a more competitive weekend at Jeddah, with both drivers making it through to the final part of qualifying. But Ocon says he thought his qualifying session was over when he hit the wall twice on his fast lap in Q3. "I hit the wall twice my fastest lap twice, on [Turn] one and at the last corner. So I thought that was it, I thought I broke something," he told media, including RacingNews365.com . "I kept pedal to the metal thinking it would have been okay but that doesn’t feel right. But I still improved, it was probably the maximum that I could achieve."
Ocon happy with how Alpine improved since Bahrain
The Frenchman was still catching his breath after the session, branding it "stressful" given how fast the Jeddah Corniche Circuit is and how close drivers run to the walls at certain corners. "It's been a very stressful qualifying. The margins are so small and with the amount of pushing and risk you have to take around here, it's pretty impressive," he said. Ocon says the lap was 'tricky' to put together, saying he struggled to get confidence in the car at certain corners. "It was hard to put it together, I would say. There was corners where the car was a little bit more tricky than others so I could not feel my confidence." "I'm happy with how we improve the car from FP3 to qualifying, because FP3 didn't feel right in the way we wanted. So definitely a good step from Bahrain as well." The Frenchman will be hoping to improve from his errors in Bahrain , which caused his race to spiral out of control.
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