Brake duct problem limits Ocon on debut

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Esteban Ocon says his F1 debut was hampered by a brake duct problem as he finished 16th in the Belgian Grand Prix.

Starting from 17th on the grid, Ocon stayed out of trouble and ran as high as 11th before the red flag period. He dropped to the back of the field at the restart but managed to move ahead of Felipe Nasr later on to come home 16th for Manor, but the Frenchman says any further progress was halted by a broken brake duct.

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“The race I think was quite good," Ocon said. "We took the opportunity that was on track, putting some pressure on the guys in front and making my way through on the first lap. I think that was important to do, staying out of trouble.

"After that we broke a brake duct which made us lose a lot of time in the race so that wasn’t ideal and was very tough to finish on the tyres at the end but we still kept Nasr behind and I think that was the only one we were racing really.

“Not [close to] retiring, but it was just losing performance, losing aero. In the end that’s why it was so tough to finish with the tyres. I think one more lap and it could have been a disaster.”

And Ocon believes he would have been able to fight for positions further up the field if it wasn't for the reliability problem.

“I think we degraded quite a lot but this brake duct affected us a lot, it’s something like almost one second per lap so it didn't help. I think with that we would have been more competitive and maybe taking the Renault would have been possible.

"We also missed a pit stop which was seven seconds on one pit stop, so when [Jolyon] Palmer stopped and came out again I could have been in front of him when he put on the supersoft, so it would have been a different race. But with a lot of ifs you never get anywhere so we need to learn from that and keep moving forward.”

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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.