General
Alpine introduces new floor in Belgium: 'Seeing what it will bring'
- Toby McLuskie
Esteban Ocon's seat broke in two in the Hungarian Grand Prix, injuring his back. The Frenchman is on the mend and hopes to finally get another good result with Alpine. The French racing stable seems to have slipped a little in the pecking order in recent weeks, but Ocon is not too worried about that.
"Going back on track quite soon but yeah I mean I will be okay to race this weekend which is the most important and yeah ready to race," stated Ocon, who recorded a P8, P8, P14 and DNF after his podium finish. So eight points from the last four races and at the other end of the garage, teammate Pierre Gasly is not faring much better.
Revanche and an update
What is the mood in the team? "I think obviously we are not where we want to be exactly. We know what we have to do, we know where we have to progress and we are obviously bringing some new parts to the car this weekend. Hopefully, that's going to bring us closer to the top 10 to be able to score but yes it's going to be important for us to have a good one before the summer break so we can all go on holidays with a clear mind."
Alpine is introducing a new floor at Spa-Francorchamps. With only one free practice session, there is little time to test whether the update performs as it does on the simulator. "Feet to the ground at the moment, just seeing what it's going to bring. Obviously, it's going to be the important understanding it as well. It's going to be tricky with the format this weekend, especially how very few tyres we have on the wets or in general for the weekend. I just want to see if it brings us closer to the points so we are going to be able to score again. That's what we want to be achieving."
Alpine has slipped a little
Alpine is currently sixth in the world championship with 47 points, 40 points behind McLaren. Putting the focus entirely on 2024 is not something Ocon wants to do just yet. "It's easy to say that for you now, but we've been working very hard. Obviously, we are not having the best couple of races recently. But when we bring some good updates to the car, we were fighting near the top five. We had a couple of qualifiers where we were very well into the top ten. I finished on the podium in Monaco. We qualified top five in Barcelona. In Canada, I was P6."
Ocon continued: "It's just recently that it hasn't gone our way. Other teams have improved more than we did. But it really shows how tight it is and how much bringing something to the next race can change things. We've seen with McLaren what happened."