Ocon bites back after Alonso Alpine accusation

Ewan Gale
Wednesday 2 November 2022 11:49

Esteban Ocon has dismissed Alpine team-mate Fernando Alonso's accusation that "only car 14" has experienced reliability issues within the F1 team this season.

Two-time champion Alonso was left furious after retiring from what was on course to be a comfortable seventh-place at the Mexico City Grand Prix, initially dropping to five cylinders before his power unit finally expired with six laps remaining.

The Spaniard believes he has lost a total of 66 points due to Alpine reliability failures, suggesting the issues always fall on his side of the garage.

Alonso's outbursts have grown since the announcement of his move to Aston Martin next season, with similar ire being expressed in Singapore when his engine failed.

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Disputing his team-mate's claim, Ocon said: “Well, I broke the gearbox in Imola, I broke the car in Silverstone, I DNFd in Singapore…I can’t count them as well on my side.

“We’ve both had issues but we are, I think, happy with the strategy of the team to push the pace of the car in front of the reliability, and that was always the aim of the team.

“Obviously, this was a bit unexpected so is something for us to understand.”

When pointed out to Ocon that Alonso was specifically referring to power unit issues, the Frenchman responded: “I have also changed six engines like him. Obviously, he broke one again [in Mexico].

"We are on the same number of engines.”

Ocon reveals management of own issues

Ocon eventually finished the Mexican event in eighth but allowed Daniel Ricciardo to stretch over 10 seconds clear in the latter stages, eradicating the effects of the McLaren driver's penalty for colliding with Yuki Tsunoda.

Revealing issues with his own A522, Ocon explained: "The team said it was critical that I had to do a lot of seconds of lift and coast and when you do so, obviously, you don’t accelerate, so you lose a lot of lap time, especially on a track like that.

“We’ve managed, we’ve finished the race which is the most important thing but we’ve lost some important points as a team.”