Ocon praises Alpine's tyre management after scoring points in Belgium

F1 Grand Prix, GP Belgium, Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps

Alpine's French driver Esteban Ocon praised the race performance and the tyre management of his A524 after having scored points at the Belgian Grand Prix.

Esteban Ocon started from P9 on the grid, but he lost out to Max Verstappen early on. The Frenchman kept his head down and battled hard, overcutting his rivals late on.

The one-time F1 race winner had a tyre advantage compared to Daniel Ricciardo, and chased down the Australian for the final point on offer. With the disqualification for George Russell, Ocon was promoted to P9, taking two points from Spa.

Ocon commented: “I’m pleased to have scored a point for the team this afternoon after some hard fights on track. We had good pace throughout, enough straight-line speed to overtake down the Kemmel Straight and in the end, it was enough for the top ten.

"There are positives, of course, like our general race pace and tyre management. I do think we could have finished maybe a position higher up had we executed things slightly differently, but that is up for us to review and improve.

"We made a good decision in focusing on race preparation and setting up the car suitably for that. I am staying in Spa for a few days for the Pirelli tyre test before the summer break."

His team-mate Pierre Gasly was stuck in a DRS train for most of the afternoon, but played the team game at Spa. He let Ocon past when the Frenchman was on fresher tyres in the closing stages of the 44-lap Spa race.

“It was not a good race today in Spa," started Gasly. "It was tough to fight with cars around us as we lacked straight line speed and we had to manage some temperature issues amongst other things.

"I feel like we missed a trick with our strategy today – as did other cars – with the one-stop clearly possible. These are things we must review as I know we can do a lot better as a team.

"In recent weeks we have not been good enough and we must do better when we return to racing after the summer break. It’s been a tough first part of the season for us but I’m pleased with some of the things we are bringing to the car. We must keep finding further improvements to the car and come back hungrier to do better," added Gasly.

Alpine team boss, Bruno Famin, who is set to leave the French marque's F1 department, said: “We end the first part of the season with an important point here in Spa. It was a tough race filled with interesting decisions on car set-up and strategy.

"From where we began this season to where we are now, clearly, we have made significant strides forwards. It has been a turbulent 2024 season so far but one where we have dug deep as a team and been able to rectify and improve drastically our car performance.

"We introduced a good upgrade here in Spa and there is more in the pipeline for the remainder of the year. We will continue to build, continue to learn and right now we are looking forward to a well-deserved summer shutdown.”