The 2025 F1 Hungarian GP weekend might have begun promisingly for Esteban Ocon, however it went downhill from Saturday’s qualifying.
After promising performance during the practice sessions, the Haas driver would have been hoping for a better qualifying. As Q1 got underway, Ocon had an unusual occurrence where a screw embedded in his front tyre. While the Haas team got the issue resolved quickly, the session continued to disappoint as Ocon set a lap of 1:16.023, which was not enough to get through to Q2. The Frenchman missed out on Q2 by two tenths as he ended up in P18.
A tricky race weekend
Despite lining up P17 on the grid after a rough session, the Frenchman was persistent in pushing to the best of his ability during the Hungarian Grand Prix. Unfortunately for him, Ocon was unable to finish higher than P16 in the race. Still, the Frenchman did an incredible 55 laps on hard tyres after pitting on lap 14. Although there was no reward at the end of the tough stint, the Haas driver did his best to survive on the C3 tyre.
After the race, Ocon expressed the weekend was immensely tricky, especially in terms of tyre deg towards the end.
“The last 10-15 laps were difficult, and unfortunately, we did not have enough space to hold the other cars behind. From Isack [Hadjar] to all the cars then that overtook me in between, we didn’t have enough pace in the last corner to hold them up. A tricky one I think we can’t forget.”
Ocon states no strategy would have changed the outcome in F1 Hungarian GP
The Frenchman continued on a more optimistic note, expressing that the summer break will give the team the opportunity to look at the data and improve.
“We’ll have a good holiday to look over everything on how to also improve qualifying. The last few qualifyings because we have a few ideas on that, or a few points that are quite clear. We need to do a better job on that,” Ocon insisted.
When asked about if he had any regrets regarding the strategy Haas opted for, the driver responded:
“I don’t think any strategy would have worked really. Yes, it was a pain in the end, and I was more on the defensive side than the attack side, so that was frustrating inside the car. I just came out of the car, so I don’t really know if there was another strategy that would have worked. From where I’m sitting, I don’t think anything would have changed, really.”
Haas not as consistent as they need to be
When asked about if he was satisfied with his portion of the season going into the summer break, Ocon remained positive despite insisting that there is still more work to do.
“On my side, I scored quite a lot of points over this first half of the season. Looking at where we were last in the first race, I think it is a positive first half. Obviously, we are not as consistent as what we would be, we need to be day in, day out, using the maximum out of the car. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that straight forward every race. I think 50% would probably be correct, the other 50 % we need to have a good look at.”
Additionally, the Frenchman was asked about if there is an upgrade coming that they know of, in which Ocon positively responded:
“Yeah there is. The team is keeping on pushing, which is good. I got told it’s also not slowing down next year because it’s keeping on the understanding going and the engineering knowledge going, which is a good thing. We saw how good the Austin update was last year for Kevin [Magnussen] and Nico [Hülkenberg], hopefully that will also be for us.”
As the Frenchman mentioned, the Haas duo started the first race of the season on a bad note, as the duo finished last on the grid, excluding the six drivers who had to DNF. After Australia, Haas appeared a bit stronger as they managed to grab points every couple of races. Following the summer break, the Haas driver will keep pushing for better results. The team would hope to become more consistent in the second half of the season and find that extra time when it comes to both qualifying and race pace.
