Ocon's Mexico radio message was 'sending message to Haas'

Esteban Ocon's radio message to Nico Hulkenberg in the Mexico City Grand Prix was actually directed at the Haas team, the Alpine driver has revealed.

While chasing the German for 10th place at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, Ocon came over the radio to say "You can say to Haas that I'm gonna go for it - so they better be ready."

He eventually got past on the brakes into Turn 1 and went on to finish ahead of team-mate Pierre Gasly on what had been a troubled weekend for the team, as he described the thought-process behind the unusual message, with overtaking difficult in the high altitude, low air density conditions.

Ocon's Hulkenberg move

"The goal of the message was that they should ask Nico to leave the space because I was going to go, and the only chance I had was basically to out-brake him - so it was going to be a muscle move," Ocon told media including RacingNews365.

"I'm going to fight and I'm going to go past. It was more to warn them that it was going to be a muscular pass, and after he made a few mistakes!"

As for his race itself, Ocon bounced back from his early retirement in the United States to claim a third points finish in four races - but felt something was missing from Alpine's weekends.

"We struggled more than usual this weekend and clearly were not as competitive as in previous races," he said.

"We need to look at things as clearly we haven't had a great weekend, so if we had to do the weekend again, we would probably change quite a bit.

"It didn't feel like we maximised the weekend, so hopefully it will be next week."