Szafnauer wants to see 'better judgements' from Ocon

A year on from his shock departure from Aston Martin to take up the reins at Alpine, team principal Otmar Szafnauer now has a firm idea of the areas that he feels need improving at Enstone in 2023.

That includes higher expectations of Esteban Ocon, despite the French driver finishing least season ahead of then-team mate Fernando Alonso in the drivers championship standings thanks in part to poor reliability on the two-time champion's car.

With Alonso departing the team over the winter and being replaced by ex-AlphaTauri driver Pierre Gasly, Szafnauer wants to see more from Ocon especially when it comes to working with team mates.

• Read also: Ocon 'more relaxed' under Alpine triarchy management

"He needs to probably make better judgements when his teammates are next to him," Szafnauer said. "You don't win it on the first lap, teammate or not."

Since making his F1 debut in 2016 with Manor, Ocon has become increasingly known for clashing with team mates. While at Force India, he collided repeatedly with Sergio Perez, and more recently tangled with Alonso in the final races of 2023.

"If you're aggressive against a competitor and you both go out, you both lose," observed Szafnauer.

"If you're aggressive against the teammate and you both go out, guess who loses? So it's just that better judgement, and get them later."

But Szafnauer acknowledged that Ocon had matured considerably since those early days together at Force India, citing the way that Ocon won the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix from Sebastian Vettel.

"I think the thing that really pleases me about Esteban is that under pressure, he often does not make a mistake. I've seen it with him when he won against Vettel. I was there, we had a faster car, and he did not make a mistake.

“He placed his car, driving in his mirrors in the right place, not one mistake, to take the win," he said, adding that Ocon's fourth place in Japan last year had also been an example of Ocon's talent.

"I think it was even more impressive for me in wet/drying conditions in Suzuka, not an easy track to drive, with Lewis [Hamilton] behind you in a quicker car the entire time, and you finish ahead of him.

"So he's matured. He's got better from that regard. And he is fast. Can he make improvements? Yeah, we will work on getting him better in some areas."

It's just one area of Alpine's operations that Szafnauer has been working on since arriving at Enstone, which are needed if the team is to retain and build upon its fourth place in last year's constructors championship.

"One of the big things I did when I first got here was look at how long it takes us to bring upgrades to the track," he commented. "It took us a long time, longer than I was used to at other places.

"We had just a bit of a subgroup to look at how we could do things differently, release things a little bit earlier from the tunnel and start some of the engineering work early.

"One of the big things was to be able to bring floors in almost half the time," he said. "I think we had four different versions of the floor and you have to bring five of each one of those [to the race].

"It's a big component, takes a long time from finding it in the wind tunnel to delivering it on track," he pointed out. "If you can squeeze that, you can bring four instead of two upgrades and you're better off.

"That was one thing we did well this year," he said. "And I think because of it, you saw the car did improve from where we started."

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