Ocon denies losing control in SQ1 crash - blames Alonso

Esteban Ocon says Fernando Alonso is entirely to blame for the pair’s shunt that occurred in the first segment of Saturday’s Sprint qualifying.

Ocon had just started his final flyer in SQ1 when he exited Turn 3 with Alonso positioned to his right a little further up the road.

However, the Aston Martin driver was on a slow lap and appeared to have given Ocon enough space on his left for the Alpine to breeze by unabated.

But the two drivers nevertheless came together, with Ocon retiring on the spot while Alonso was able to return to the pits where his session was also declared over due to suspension damage suffered by his AMR23.

After the session, the Spaniard said that his run-in was a case of being “in the wrong place at the wrong time”, while he also suggested that Ocon had lost control of his car on the exit of Turn 3 and veered into the Aston’s trajectory.

Read also:

• Alonso: Crash with Ocon was ‘wrong place, wrong time’

But the Frenchman was clearly at odds with his rival’s view.

“It was a big one,” Ocon said. “It was a hard impact. I’m feeling a bit sore obviously after that one but it doesn’t matter we’ll go on racing.

“It’s a difficult one to swallow because we were on for a good improvement on that lap we were going to go through in SQ2,” he added. “But we found Fernando in the way.

“I heard people saying I lost the car, it’s not true. We had corrections like that throughout the whole paddock, even on Lando [Norris’] quickest lap he had a correction there and ran wide like this.

“Fernando steered to the left in the middle of the corner and didn’t leave enough space and we collided. But in the end it doesn’t matter about that, that’s something that happened, obviously we will now go on and focus on the race.”

The incident was reported to the stewards who will have the last word on who – if anyone – was responsible for the clash.

“He was trying to counteract all the arguments, saying he left enough space but the reality is if Fernando is not there on the right we don’t collide,” said Ocon.

With just two hours to go before the start of Saturday’s Sprint, Alpine’s crews were hard at work trying to repair Ocon’s car in time for the 30-minute mad dash.

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