Haas driver Esteban Ocon is looking to change his form ahead of the F1 Mexico City GP. After a poor qualifying for the United States GP, Ocon started the race on hard tyres — a gamble that did not pay off. The French driver has failed to score points since the F1 Dutch GP. On the other hand, teammate Ollie Bearman scored consecutive points finishes in the past two races.
Ahead of the F1 Mexico City GP, Ocon discussed how his car’s set-up affected his performance at last week’s race.
Set-up differences ahead of F1 Mexico City GP
Ocon had difficulties with the car during the F1 United States GP. The Haas driver finished the race in P15 while Bearman finished P9 after a near-collision with Yuki Tsunoda. Ahead of the F1 Mexico City GP, Bearman is beating Ocon in Haas’ qualifying head-to-head.
When asked about set-up changes ahead of the F1 Mexico City GP, Ocon responded, “We keep working on things, for sure. The thing is that, if you want to try different things, this track here is very different in terms of layout. In terms of speed, as well. It’s much more driven on to the low-speed corners.
“So, this is not where we were struggling last week. It was much more on the fast section and changes of direction that we were struggling.
“We’ll see how it goes into [Turns] 8, 9, 10, but usually it is very different compromise. So, it’s not a great track to do back-to-back tests, but having said that, we face different challenges. But we need to see how it goes.”
Ocon highlighted the importance of the braking zones at the F1 Mexico City GP, stating, “I think this track here, the most important is really to get the braking right. To get the confidence, not having front-locking is going to be the main thing. And, yeah, if you get confidence in the brakes, usually they are quite visible.”
Ocon discusses inconsistencies with car’s performance ahead of F1 Mexico City GP
The Haas driver mentioned having difficulties in the fast corners and with change of direction when driving. However, these problems have been quite inconsistent, posing a problem to the team. Haas introduced a small upgrade package at last week’s race.
Ahead of the F1 Mexico City GP, Ocon discussed the car’s instability in high speed corners. Ocon explained, “It hasn’t been all the time, which has been a strange thing. But we’ve seen it at times where this has happened, but we always had a clear understanding of why that was.
“It was a bit more tricky last weekend because we had to run a much lower front wing than what we should have run, compared to any numbers that we usually run for such track and also compared to Ollie [Bearman], as well.
“That was quite obviously a strange difference, but still having the same differences where I could not really tuck the car in.
“[Turns] 3, 4 was basically the same. But it was turning into 5, which was the problem every lap. And I could not be as aggressive and the lap time loss was quite big at the end of the day. So, all the low speed was pretty decent. It would have been enough to keep going, keep progressing through [qualifying], but the high speed instability was a big thing.”
