Ocon had to change his tires for the first time on lap 9, just before a piece of tear-off got stuck in one of the brake ducts of his Alpine A524 car. This caused the brakes to get too hot.
At that time, he was fighting with Kevin Magnussen, Alex Albon, and Nico Hulkenberg. Both Magnussen and Hulkenberg ended up finishing in the top positions. However, because of the brake problem, Ocon had to make another stop just seven laps after the first one.
It was too early for him to finish the race without making a third stop later on to put on the hard tires that he had left earlier.
He ended up in 16th place behind Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu from the Sauber team, who had long delays in the pits.
“Before the tear-off incident, we were fighting with Kevin, Alex, and I was ahead of Nico,” said Ocon when asked about his race. “So we had a chance for points, maybe finishing ninth to 11th. It’s hard to say how it would have ended up, but it was an interesting race. I was happy with our progress and pace. We were keeping up with the others, so things were looking good.”
Explaining what happened with his brakes, he said: “At the beginning, a piece of tear-off got stuck in my mirror, and then a few laps later, another piece got into my brake duct.
“If we hadn’t stopped, the back of the car would have caught fire. So stopping was the safe thing to do. Maybe if we had continued, we would have had to retire. We’ll never know.
“Not much we could do about it. My radio also stopped working around lap 30. It was like having really bad Wi-Fi that keeps cutting off!
“So, a lot of things went wrong, just bad luck, I would say. But we made progress this weekend, slowly. Hopefully, we can keep that up.”
Ocon believes that Alpine improved in Melbourne in understanding how to set up their difficult A524 car.
“I think this race was our strongest out of the three, especially in terms of pace and performance,” he said. “That’s good. It means we’re heading in the right direction.
“Everything’s relative, but compared to the first two races, it’s an improvement. The car felt better too. So it’s not just that this track suits the car better – I don’t think it does. I think we set it up much better than in the previous races.”
Also read: Ocon Voices Frustration Over Fewer Point Opportunities for Bottom Five F1 Teams
