Esteban Ocon admitted that the upgrades Alpine brought to the recent races proved to be effective.
Alpine brought aerodynamic updates to the British GP as well as a new rear wing to the Austrian GP. In both races, one of their cars finished in the top 5. Alpine equalled McLaren on points in the Constructors’ Championship.
“It’s very positive, and [I am] very happy to see that the one that we brought in Silverstone made quite a difference,” Ocon commented on the upgrades.
“We can really see it now. And yeah, I hope the next ones are going to be as big. We still have work to do to be able to perform against the Mercedes, because they are still too fast.
“So if they can, if the team can bring more of this stuff, we will take it.”
Nevertheless, Ocon noted that Alpine need to put efforts to ensure consistency.
“We still have a bit of work to do on the consistency side. There were times that I felt we didn’t necessarily have the pace that the car could deliver. But this weekend [the Austrian GP] has been perfect on that side.
“So there’s still some learning curve for us to do to consistently perform at that level. But clearly this weekend, it was one where we optimized everything.”
Both Ocon and Fernando Alonso encountered reliability issues in Britain and Austria. The Frenchman expects that the problems will be solved.
“I trust my team, obviously. But I mean, the team is aware that these are issues that we can’t have, to be scoring good points. But in the end, the car is having performance.
“And it was always the plan, we wanted a car which can perform, can deliver good results. And the reliability will come, the more we go through the races.”
