Manor ‘made a great step’ - Ocon

Esteban Ocon says Manor “made a great step” at the Japanese Grand Prix and believes his growing experience is helping push the team forward.

Manor finished at the back of the field - with Ocon 21st ahead of team-mate Pascal Wehrlein - at Suzuka, but the reigning GP3 champion was just over two seconds adrift of Esteban Gutierrez at the end of a race which saw all 22 cars finish. Having been competitive in terms of pace, Ocon says there was clear progress made by Manor which put it in the midfield battle.

“We made a great step, that’s why I am pretty pleased with the weekend,” Ocon said. “We could have jumped a Sauber in qualifying. Two more laps and I could have got the Haas, so that was really good. We are much closer than we were in Malaysia, and if we keep improving like this, who knows maybe we can fight for the places? Now we are still a bit behind but we are not far from fighting them.”

Having now had five races to get comfortable with the team, Ocon says he is growing in the ability to help improve its performance.

“Yeah, I am. I have been much more for the last two grands prix, I start to have more experience as well which helps. If we keep improving like this I really hope we can achieve something good because the team deserves it.”

Suzuka also saw Ocon outqualify and beat Wehrlein, but the Frenchman insists he only has eyes for Sauber rather than winning the battle against his team-mate.

“I mean, I was in front of him in qualifying also. It didn’t make a massive difference. But it’s not the target to beat him, what we want is to beat the Saubers.”

Asked if he was pleased Sauber failed to score at Suzuka, Ocon added: “Yeah, of course!

“We don’t want them to score! If we can block them it would be good.”

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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.