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A clip recently surfaced on social media of Esteban Ocon's overtakes at the 2024 F1 Belgian GP. The French driver was on the hunt and made moves on several midfield drivers.
Ocon qualified P9 for the race at Spa but had a poor start off the racing line in the beginning. He dropped to P11 and had to fight with Valtteri Bottas, who gained several places. Though the Frenchman extended his lead on medium tires, he pitted on Lap 13. He then came out all the way down in P17.
With his fresh hard tires, Ocon overtook drivers like his own teammate, Pierre Gasly, Nico Hulkenberg, Fernando Alonso Alex Albon and more. After the next pitstop, the Alpine driver once again went on an overtaking spree and moved past Daniel Ricciardo.
Take a look at the video below:
Despite several overtakes, Esteban Ocon was unable to move ahead of his qualifying position and stayed at P9 in the Belgian GP.
The French driver is about to leave Alpine and join Haas after the 2024 F1 season. He will be paired with Ferrari junior Oliver Bearman who will begin his F1 journey with the American team. Alpine have yet to announce Ocon's replacement for 2025.
Esteban Ocon speaks on his Alpine exit and internal struggle at the team
Esteban Ocon recently talked about why he decided to leave Alpine and also touched on the internal management struggle at the French team.
Speaking to the media, he explained how he needed a new challenge in a new team. He added that he acheived great milestones with Alpine, but also noted the management struggles of the team.
He admitted that the car's development has been slow and unfruitful. According to Ocon, some of the issues have been consistently present in Alpine cars for several years now. He said (via PlanetF1):
“The decision for me was quite clear. [I decided] quite a long time ago that I wanted a new challenge. We’ve achieved good things, we’ve achieved things a little bit more difficult at times. It’s not a secret to anyone, no one’s happy inside the team about where we are and there hasn’t been enough of an improvement on some terms, on some technical issues, that we had years ago."
"That circle of technical development and improvement hasn’t been on top of that and we are facing the issues that we had already three years ago with the current car, which is not possible in terms of the Formula 1 world," he added.
After the Belgian GP, Esteban Ocon is in 17th place on the Drivers' Championship table with five points while his teammate, Pierre Gasly is in 15th place with six points. In the Constructors' Championship, Alpine stands in eighth place with only 11 points.
