Esteban Ocon rounded out a sterling effort from Haas at the F1 Mexico City GP in improving from an 11th starting position to come home 9th. It’s the team’s fourth double-points finish and their best result since Ocon’s 5th and Ollie Bearman’s 8th at Shanghai.
After the race Ocon acknowledged that the race could have gone smoother despite the positive result.
“I really tried to maximise the pace we had, [but] we got unlucky with quite a lot of things.”
Ocon stuck behind Tsunoda
In particular, Ocon was bogged down behind Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda for much of the first part of the race. In the first stint the French driver was on softs, whilst the Japanese was on mediums.
“I got stuck behind Yuki that was defending like I’ve never seen.
“I always seem to [catch] him in the wrong place at the wrong time and basically that damaged our race, because we must have lost like eight or nine seconds stuck behind him in that first stint and I couldn’t get by.”
It was the pit stop on lap 27 that finally got Ocon some separation from Tsunoda, who finished behind in 11th.
Piastri (briefly) stuck behind Ocon
While Ocon ran a one-stop race, Oscar Piastri and Ocon’s teammate Bearman were in a group that pitted for soft tyres on laps 47 and 48, respectively. The situation briefly put Ocon in a spirited battle with Piastri, which proved consequential for the team’s overall effort given Bearman’s 1.11 second margin ahead of the McLaren driver.
“I made him lose quite a few seconds with that fight between four to six, so that was quite good.”
Ultimately Piastri and the other pitting cars got past, and Ocon settled back into P9.
Ocon looking for 5th points finish in Brazil
Ocon thinks their F1 Mexico City GP performance can be sustained. Next is São Paulo, where Ocon finished 2nd last year and has four straight points finishes.
“We didn’t show everything that there was, so there was some left on the table, but it definitely feels good to have that behind us. And I hope it’s not only track related. We are going to see in Interlagos how it is. It’s a track that I look forward to and I hope that we can perform in a similar way.”
