Okon: I will always respect Alonso

During the days of the Brazilian race weekend, Alpine F1 thrilled its fans, not to mention the team’s management.

After Saturday’s sprint, which saw Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon face off on track, resulting in damaged equipment, a fine from the two-time world champion and a start from distant positions in Sunday’s race, Otmar Szafnauer was forced to declare: “Both riders let the team down.”

But actually the Sao Paulo Grand Prix has developed surprisingly well for the Renault works team. Alonso had a great race and finished fifth while his teammate finished 8th. With none of the McLaren drivers able to finish, Alpine solidified its position against McLaren for 4th place in the Constructors’ Championship, scoring 167:148 for the season finale.

However, it cannot be said that the race went very smoothly for the team. Ocon and Alonso had different tactics and in one of the episodes of the race, Fernando, who was behind a partner, asked the team to tell Esteban to let him pass.

The French engineer instructed his driver not to fight Alonso, but he reacted sharply: “Don’t interfere with me, at the right time, when the situation stabilizes, I will do it. Otherwise, we could lose everything on the reboot. I have to stay ahead of Vettel, I’m not going to compete with Fernando.”

After the race, Okon explained that he had an argument with his engineer because of a misunderstanding: “They thought I didn’t want to miss Fernando. And I just said I don’t want to miss him at the restart, because first I’m going to get ahead of Sebastian and then I’ll take care of everything else. I wanted to skip my partner later, which I did. I still couldn’t stop him, he was riding really hard on soft tires.

Of course the team had to earn a lot of points and I knew Fernando was in a situation where he could do well, so the team didn’t have to tell me what to do.”

After the sprint, Alonso was very angry with his partner and Okon does not hide that he did not like Fernando’s comments on Saturday: “What he said about me to the press was not very pleasant. I have always treated him with great respect and will always respect him, he is a legendary racer.

However, it doesn’t matter what he says to journalists, I prefer to talk to him in person. And the fact that he will now be driving for Aston Martin just gives me extra motivation – I will try to get ahead of him next year!”