Esteban Ocon confident of Alpine's chances in Monaco GP - here's why

The Alpine F1 team have been one of the surprises of the 2021 Formula 1 season so far. Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso are both scoring points regularly, but it is the young Frenchman who has outshone his veteran teammate. They did, however, look off the pace only slightly in the Spanish GP. However, Ocon remains confident the team will improve going into the Monaco GP. “It has of course only been two cases that we’ve seen that trend but the car didn’t feel as good on Sunday in terms of pace compared to qualifying,” Ocon said.

“We were struggling a little bit in pace compared to Charles (Leclerc), compared to Daniel (Ricciardo) as well – he was pulling away clearly – and (Carlos) Sainz.

“So we struggled a bit, of course also trying to stay on one stop was tricky and towards the end of the race we lost quite a lot of lap time.

“So quite a few things that we need to review but overall I think we end this weekend thinking positively. Looking at the beginning of the year I think we are a lot happier with where we are now.

“We know the areas that we need to focus on, which is a bit more the race clearly, but coming to Monaco we go there with a smile at the moment because we’ve been working well.”

More in store for Esteban Ocon & Alpine?

Ocon believes a good qualifying run will be key in Monaco, where it is hard to overtake.

“Until we put the car there and we do the qualifying we will not know exactly, but I think looking at our performance in qualifying we should be in good shape in Monaco.

“I hope that we are going to be able to perform as good, so I think we can give a fight to the Ferraris and the other cars around in qualifying. I’m pretty confident.

“The place we have to focus – the race – in Monaco it’s hard to overtake so it’s less of a critical point, but yes I think we are a bit slower than Ferrari and a bit slower than McLaren at the moment on pure pace in the race.”