Ocon hits out at 'insane' Alpine after Silverstone disaster

Esteban Ocon has labelled Alpine's British Grand Prix as "insane" following what he described as a catalogue of errors. 

On what turned out to be a difficult weekend for the team with Pierre Gasly not even starting due to a gearbox issue, Ocon qualified 18th and only moved forward to 16th, aided by the retirement of George Russell. 

He was one of a handful of drivers including Sergio Perez and Charles Leclerc to opt for an early switch to intermediate tyres on lap 20 at Silverstone - but this proved the wrong call after the track was not wet enough.

While Perez and Leclerc stuck the intermediates out, Ocon bailed, pitted for slicks before the change back to inters when the rain did fall - pitting three times between laps 20 and 26.

He would eventually finish ahead of Perez after a late overtake, but post-race, the Frenchman, who is leaving the team was not happy.

"There was nothing brave about that race, everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong," Ocon told media including RacingNews365.

"We took every wrong decision from before the race, to on the grid, to during the race, every call or [decision] were the wrong ones, so there is not that much more to say. 

"If we go into details, basically, there were some drops of rain, it started to get tricky in Turns 1 and 2, and I thought: 'if the next lap it stays like this, it is going to be wet.'

"So I asked the team if it was going to rain more and they said: 'yes, it will rain more', so I said: 'okay, we box if it rains more' and the team said okay. 

"I exited [the pits] and it was bright sunshine, so I don't know what to do anymore. It has not gone our way at all, it is unbelievable, I have never seen something like this in my career. 

"It has been insane."

Budapest hopes

The next race on the calendar has better memories for Ocon - who claimed his maiden grand prix victory in Hungary in the 2021 race.

However, despite hoping to be back fighting for points, Ocon feels this is not a "guarantee" given the Silverstone struggles.

"We have just turned the page, and will go again in Budapest which is a very good track, we hope to be back to where we should be," he said.

"We need to optimise everything for us to be able to fight with the other guys, we need to be perfect on every single decision, optimising the car set-up, because otherwise, we are outside of the top 10.

"For Budapest, we should have the capability of fighting for good things, but there is no guarantee after this weekend, because it really shows that we need to do everything perfect."