Esteban Ocon opened his 2026 F1 United States GP with a good start. However, he then had to watch the race unravel through a familiar problem. The opening lap brought the gain, and the rest of the afternoon brought front locking, inconsistency and cars he could not hold behind.
The start, the teammate call and the gain that got away
Ocon took pride in the launch in the print media pen. He gained three spots on the first lap.
“Yeah, I mean, I think we are leading the position gain on lap one since the beginning of the year. So, yeah, we are very strong on that side, I’m pretty proud of it because we put a lot of work, you know, with the team, with the control guys as well, for the clutch control and I’ve always worked on the reaction time and on the strategy, you know, on how to get the best out of where to position myself into the first lap.”
The gain could have been bigger, but Ocon chose caution with his teammate alongside him.
“Obviously it was Ollie [Bearman], so we needed to be careful a little bit, what we are doing. But, if it was not Ollie [Bearman], I would have gained one more place, you know, I was ahead of him but then I let him go once that happened.”
Front locking that will not go away in his Haas F1 car
Ocon described a car that punished him later in the stint and what happens during qualifying after the 2026 F1 United States GP.
“But anyway, yeah, we were on for a good position, the guys did a good pit stop but we’ve been struggling with the car, with these inconsistencies, with these front locking issues that we’ve already seen last year unfortunately but we are still not on top of them.
“It comes in quali when you push the car to its limits and yeah, when the tyre takes off, I need to anticipate braking 10-15 metres and I still do pick up a lot of locking and a lot of understeer, so it’s not a very nice feeling, it’s quite unpredictable but yeah, it’s been there all weekend so we minimised it, I think it was quite positive, you know, with the engineers we managed to get it a little bit more under control but the underlying problem is still there.”
Cars he could not hold back
The pace deficit cost him track position as both Audi drivers and the Racing Bulls of Arvid Lindblad overtook him in the second stint, before pulling away. In fact, the Brazilian even passed him a second time despite making a second stop.
“It’s very strange, it came later in the stint and we were not fast enough basically to keep the other guys behind, Arvid [Lindblad], Nico [Hülkenberg] and Gabi [Bortoleto], you know, these three cars were behind us well clear, you know, after the first stint we should have been able to hold them. But not quite enough pace and this is what we need to work on.”
Ocon left the 2026 F1 United States GP knowing underlying problems and a lack of pace outlasted the result, and that is what he wants fixed next.
