Wehrlein unphased by arrival of Ocon at Manor

40

Pascal Wehrlein said that the changeover of team mates from Rio Haryanto to Esteban Ocon would make little difference to him in the way that he approaches the remainder of the season.

"My responsibility is to be faster than my team mate," said Wehrlein. "It doesn't really matter who it is.

"Now it's a new one and a new challenge, so I'm looking forward to that."

Wehrlein added that he had no way of benchmarking his performance with that of Ocon when it came to on-track comparisons.

I don't really know, I never drove against Esteban so let's see. Not in any series, ever," he said, although he admitted that he'd seen a few DTM races in which Ocon has been competing this year.

"I didn't watch every race from him, but a few DTM races this year. Of course I think it's difficult in the first season in DTM.

"And yes, from last year in GP3 I watched because I was always here on the weekends and didn't have too much to do as a reserve driver so of course I watched all the other series."

Wehrlein agreed with the suggestion that as the senior driver in the line-up, he would now need to extend a helping hand to Ocon to get the new arrival up to speed for the benefit of the entire team.

"Of course in a team you always have to work together and try to improve as much you can the car. We have a few small new parts on the car, and we went to Split to work of course, and then you need to work together to find the best set-up at the end."

As for Spa, Wehrlein said he had little memory of his single outing here in Formula 3 which was held in wet weather, and that he was looking forward to his first real taste of the famous iconic circuit in better weather this weekend.

"I'm looking forward to the first sector, then the second one with the more difficult of course, but I think the other teams will reduce a bit of downforce level to gain some top speed so maybe the difference in the second sector could be less than it would be.

"We always hope for results like Austria, but let's see," he added. "In general I feel confident about the track. Should be better for us."

Romain Grosjean column: More motivated than ever

Chris Medland's 2016 Belgian Grand Prix preview

How Eric Boullier keeps McLaren on its toes

F1i Classic - Mayhem, monsoon and the mother of all Belgian Grand Prix

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.