Esteban Ocon addresses belief that teammate Fernando Alonso is 'difficult to work with'

Alpine F1 team driver Esteban Ocon does not believe teammate Fernando Alonso is difficult to work with.

Ocon and Alonso helped Alpine finish fifth in the Formula 1 constructor’s championship in the 2021 season.

But there were many who believed the Spaniard, who returned to F1 after 2 years out of the sport, could be a disruptive influence in the team.

The thought is not without merit. Alonso had a very public falling out with Lewis Hamilton during their one season at McLaren as teammates.

And the two-time world champion also faced issues in other teams he was at, most notably Ferrari.

Ocon, however, stated that he wanted to see for himself if this was true and says he never felt anything of the sort.

“A lot of people said Fernando was very difficult to work with, that he had a reputation for breaking teammates and all that,” he told Racer.com.

“I wanted to see it from my eyes, I wanted to see if what people were saying was true and in the end it wasn’t.

“We’ve just had a fantastic collaboration all together. He’s a hell of a racer. He’s extremely extremely fast, for sure the fastest teammate I’ve had for a while.

“I was very happy to work alongside him. I’ve learned a lot alongside him, just the way Fernando thinks out of the box, where some other drivers would not think about or even the team would not think about stuff.

“It’s pushing the limit to strategies or how we can optimize everything.”

‘Our driving styles are different’ – Esteban Ocon

That being said, Ocon did point out one notable difference in their overall approaches – the style of driving they choose.

The Frenchman, who took his maiden F1 win at Hungary last year, pointed out that their styles sometimes suited certain tracks more.

“Of course the driving styles are quite different but in the end our feedback is exactly the same.

“When both cars are working normally, we’ve had very close qualifying pace and all that, we had exactly the same feedback.

“For sure his driving style was suiting some tracks more than me — I had times where my driving style was maybe a little bit nicer to the tires.

“Trying to experiment… for sure I did, at some point, I was obviously not closing my eyes and just not looking at what Fernando is doing.

“But I think he’s been the teammate I’ve been closest with in terms of setup and actually driving.”