Esteban Ocon: We can’t afford to relax

Alpine continues to compete with McLaren for fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship. In the final leg in Mexico City, Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo helped their team close the gap to seven points, but Esteban Ocon hopes Alpine will have the advantage in Sao Paulo.

Esteban Ocon: “I have mixed feelings about racing in Brazil, but we all love coming to this track. The racing is legendary, some corners are unique. I love Interlagos – probably the track I did the most laps in video games during the pandemic. It’s great that we’re waiting for two races at once this weekend.

As we have limited time to prepare for qualifying, it is important to make everything perfect and to quickly have confidence in the car during the first practice, as this is the only possibility to change the settings. If you can show high speed right away, that’s the key to a successful performance this weekend.

We are only seven points ahead of McLaren, so we can’t afford to lose focus. The season turned out to be very long, a lot has happened, but we have absolutely no time to relax. We will only be able to do this after waving the checkered flag in Abu Dhabi.

The battle will continue to the end. In Mexico City McLaren was fast, but they didn’t always have enough stability during the season, just like us. Hopefully we’ll be up front this weekend.

I think the team had a good season. We’ve been constantly refining the car, trying to squeeze more out of it. Of course we did a good job, because all the novelties that the team was preparing allowed us to take a big step forward. Next year we should continue on the same footing and reach a stable position in the top five.