Despite a challenging race and finishing outside of the points in P13, it was an encouraging 2026 F1 British GP for Haas’ Esteban Ocon, who noted the visible improvement in performance of his VF-26.
Following the race, the Frenchman reflected on his performance and shared his perspective on the race ending under the Safety Car.
Ocon on his strong start at the 2026 F1 British GP
The Frenchman started the race in P17, and slowly made progress, climbing to an impressive P11 in the opening laps. A strong performance, Ocon was personally very pleased with.
“You didn’t see the start? You should have rewatched it. That was something else. 17th to 11th. I don’t know, I was almost in the points. Off the line, it was good, but also out of the first couple corners I overtook everyone. I was left, right, kept overtaking. I think after lap two I was P11”
However, despite the strong launch, the 29-year-old noted that Haas lacked the race pace needed to match their competition and maintain positions. Audi and Alpine proved to be quicker once more.
“Anyway, after a good start we lacked a little bit of pace. Obviously we were going down the outer a little bit. We were not able to hold the other faster cars, the Alpines, the Williams, the Audis. They were a bit too quick for us.”
Frustration with the VSC
On Lap 21 of the 2026 F1 British GP, a Virtual Safety Car (VSC) was called after an umbrella blew onto the circuit’s run-off area. Ocon was the only driver to pit under the VSC. However, it would ultimately be not a massive gain, with the item being cleared almost immediately. As a result, the VSC only lasted a very short amount of time.
It would continue to get worse for the Frenchman as he lost significant time due to a slow change onto the hard tyres later on. According to Ocon, this was due to ” an issue with the rear right”.
“But I saw that the luck might turn around with that VSC, so I dive in, and the thing lasts 5 seconds. Unbelievable. I’m not even stopped yet that it’s already green. I can’t believe my eyes. It keeps going all the time. Then we stopped, and we had an issue with the rear right, so the pit stop was 16.5 seconds. Unfortunately, that delayed us a long time.”
Nonetheless, Ocon noted the resolution of the severe loss of rear downforce that has plagued his car for the majority of the previous weekends. The 2021 Hungarian GP winner walks away from the weekend encouraged by Haas’ progress.
“Then we exited the fight with the Cadillac, cleared them, and the car was working normally. I was happy with that. The team really did a good job by giving me a car that was healthy again. Something I didn’t feel for quite a long time. We didn’t have extra degradation or stuff like that that we could face earlier this year. That was good. That was positive.
“Obviously not the perfect race, but we’ll keep pushing on the next round to hopefully extract a little bit more and hopefully get some more opportunities.”
Ending the race under a Safety Car
Ocon was then asked for his opinion on the 2026 F1 British GP ending on a Safety Car, to which the Frenchman replied: “I think for Sporting Equity they probably didn’t want to restart the race, I guess.”
The 29-year-old further explained his point, stating that a lot could happen in a single lap. He added that he would have liked the one-lap shootout at the end of the race. This is because he, along with many cars, had pitted for soft tyres under the final Safety Car, and Ocon was confident, especially since he was on a brand new set.
“We’ve seen in the past to restart for one lap, it has happened. I would have liked for it to restart one lap. I had new soft, most of the people had on used it. That would have been nice, but it didn’t happen.”
When asked if he had prepared for a restart, the Haas driver shared: “Yeah, in my head for five seconds. Then they said no, it’s staying out. That was it.”
Looking ahead to the next weekend
While Ocon is encouraged by Haas’ performance at the 2026 F1 British GP, he remains cautious about whether the fixes will actually last ahead of the upcoming Belgian GP.
The Frenchman noted the pattern of inconsistencies when the car is disassembled and rebuilt between races. Hence, he will wait to see how the car performs in Spa-Francorchamps before getting his hopes up.
Nonetheless, he hopes to carry on the promising momentum into the upcoming weekend.
“Yeah, this weekend it was. It was much better on every front. We had normal loads on the car. We managed to get a good setup on the car on Saturday and Sunday.
“But we need to wait and see because we’ve seen the inconsistencies. When we get the car apart, put it back together, different parts. So let’s wait and see in Spa. Hopefully the performance of the car will be very similar or a little bit better. And then if that’s the case, we should be on for a decent run. But we need to have one more weekend which is out of trouble again.”
