Ocon 'one degree' away from crashing like Schumacher

Alpine's Esteban Ocon says he suffered a close call in qualifying in Jeddah when he almost lost it at the same spot where Mick Schumacher crashed in Q2.

The Haas driver slid wide onto the kerb at Turn 10 and lost control of his car which then heavily hit the inside concrete wall on the exit.

Schumacher fortunately emerged unscathed from the wreck save for some bruising but was flown to hospital for a precautionary check.

But when the session resumed after a lengthy track clean-up, Ocon came close to suffering a similar fate in Q3, only nearly avoiding losing control and veering off into the wall.

"I think one more degree and I would have been gone [into the wall]," said the Frenchman. "I would have had exactly the same thing that happened to Mick.

"Not nice. Not nice at all. I pushed hard, I didn't get the tyre up to temperature as much as I wanted. And yeah, I tried to get the lap time."

The close call was too much excitement in one night for Ocon who decided to settle for fifth in the Q3 pecking order.

"In the end, I backed off," he added. "I said, 'look, it's enough and let's go back into the pits.'"

Heralded as the fastest street circuit in the world, Jeddah's wall-lined layout offers no margin for error, especially in qualifying when drivers add risk.

"There's not much runoff, we know it – we know it's a risk and reward track, you need to push in quali," Ocon explained.

"We've seen not all the drivers being aware of that, because there was no incident in practice. And once you push the limit very hard, you are very near them.

"Of course, there's a few scary moments but we know it's risk and reward, especially in that place."

• Read also: Schumacher ruled out of Saudi Arabian GP after huge crash

McLaren's Lando Norris suggested that F1's new-generation cars that run with very little clearance are at odds with certain kerbs, such as the one that outlines the inside of Jeddah's Turn 10 where Schumacher crashed.

"I think, with this era of cars, with how you have to run them and how they're designed, some kerbs throughout the year might need to change, and I think this kerb is one of them," the Briton said after qualifying.

"I think it was very evident from Formula 2, because [in] Formula 2 you have to run the cars very low as well, and I think there were two crashes and Cem [Bolukbasi] was in hospital.

"So I think, just with these type of cars, you can't have such an aggressive kerb at such a speed that we're running at, and the thing that makes it worse is how it's angled to come back and then curves around.

"You just get it a little bit wrong and it can be a big incident, like we saw."

Norris, who qualified P11, ultimately urged F1 to change the kerb at Turn 10 ahead of Sunday's race.

"I think it needs to be edited for tomorrow and changed a bit," he said.

"Because - especially in a race situation - if you're following or you just get a bit of understeer because of the dirty air and so on, through no fault of your own, you can just get caught out.

"With the car and how it is and the kerb, it can easily end up in a bad place, so I think they need to change it before tomorrow."

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