F1 star shares 'amazing' Hamilton detail at Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, Montreal, 2024 — Photo: © IMAGO

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F1 star shares 'amazing' Hamilton detail at Mercedes

The pair previously worked together at the Silver Arrows

Rhys Thomas

Sunday 16 June 2024 21:57

Esteban Ocon has shared how Lewis Hamilton 'amazed' him whilst the French driver was at Mercedes.

The 27-year-old has been with the Silver Arrows since 2015, and was the team's reserve driver in 2019.

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Mercedes are still involved in Ocon's management, and will help the driver find a new seat for 2025 after his Alpine exit was announced.

Ocon was part of the Mercedes team whilst Hamilton was racking up his world championships, including his sixth in 2019, so it is hardly surprising that he picked up a few pointers.

Esteban Ocon was a reserve driver at Mercedes before joining Alpine

Lewis Hamilton has won six of his seven titles with Mercedes

How Lewis Hamilton's focus amid a hectic life wowed Esteban Ocon

As reserve driver for Mercedes, Ocon was afforded a unique insight into how Hamilton works behind the scenes.

The Frenchman was asked on the High Performance podcast whether anything impressed him about F1's record race winner aside from his ability on track.

“Definitely," said Ocon. "I remember Lewis coming from different marketing events and all these things in a race weekend – Lewis is a very busy man. Apart from racing, that’s some of the differences compared to some drivers who are more focused onto the racetrack.

“He’s got a very busy life in general and seeing how he switches his focus from one thing to another, for me that kind of amazed me that he was straight away on point, back with his engineer after something completely different.

“He didn’t take 10 minutes to refocus and re-work with his engineers because you don’t have time to do that.

"He always had his paper boards with notes and he was always having notes not to forget things from one year to another, or one session to another."

Alpine's Esteban Ocon needs to find a new team for 2025

Ocon shared that he also commits to these meticulous practices now, something he may not have done when driving for Manor or Force India/Racing Point (now Aston Martin) before taking a year out of the grid as Mercedes reserve driver.

Ocon explained that he keeps notes on “performance meetings, problems to fix, all of the points that we have to go through.

“Then I phrase things to be able to retransfer to the engineers at the right time. But, if I don’t write them at the exact moment that I’m going to come out of the car, I will not remember exactly, or they’re going to be much more vague.

“If I go to a marketing event... and then come back and I’m like, ‘I had something very interesting, but I don’t remember it’, imagine how much that would cost basically - to us, to our performance.”

Ocon will be hoping to take his diligent note-taking to another team in the paddock for 2025, with his future still up in the air.

Lewis Hamilton Mercedes Alpine Alex Albon Esteban Ocon