Podium finish still out of reach for Ocon

Esteban Ocon was hoping to achieve his first podium finish on Sunday at Monza, but a relative lack of pace meant the Force India driver was never in contention for a top-3 finish.

The French driver enjoyed a perfect launch off the grid, stealing Lance Stroll's thunder by passing the Williams drivers into Turn 1 and running second to Lewis Hamilton in the opening laps of the race.

Gradually however, Ocon was overhauled by the faster Mercedes of Valtteri  Bottas and the Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel, before later succumbing to attacks from Daniel Ricciardo and Kimi Raikkonen. 

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"I really enjoyed the race and I’m happy with our performance," said Ocon.

"At the same time I’m a little disappointed because I really wanted to finish on the podium today.

"But you have to be realistic and we didn’t have the pace to match Mercedes and Ferrari, so I think sixth place was the maximum we could achieve."

"At one stage we were racing against Raikkonen and I thought we could keep him behind, but he was just too quick. I also had a good battle with Stroll for most of the race and I had to work hard to keep him behind me.

"With the strong qualifying yesterday and the sixth place today, it’s been a great weekend. I have to say a big thanks to the whole team for all their hard work and for giving me such a competitive car."

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