Esteban Ocon’s place at Alpine for the 2022 Formula 1 season is not yet set in stone, but the combination of his performances so far this year and Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi’s recent endorsement suggest he is likely to stay on.
Heading into the season, that was far from a foregone conclusion.
Ocon was outperformed by Daniel Ricciardo last year and the arrival of two-time F1 world champion Fernando Alonso for 2021 meant the 24-year-old started the season under pressure.
Since failing to score in the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix after his qualifying was ruined by ill-timed yellow flags, with Sebastian Vettel then rear-ending him in the race, Ocon has picked up a string of four points finishes.
He has also been Alpine’s spearhead, outqualifying Alonso in each of the past four weekends and starting on the third row in both Portugal and Spain.
“It is indeed something we are considering and Esteban is doing everything to make me consider keeping him in the team,” said Rossi when asked if he planned to get Ocon’s future with the team tied down.
“I would be remiss if I didn’t think of it. At the moment, we are already engaged in some conversations with his agent, his management team, Mercedes at large.”
The mention of Mercedes is pertinent given Ocon still retains ties there. While team principal Toto Wolff has stated the Frenchman is a consideration for a Mercedes seat, it’s understood that this is not a serious possibility.
But Ocon’s strong start to the season means that suggestions Alpine might pursue an alternative option that emerged late last season and over the winter, perhaps attempting to sign Pierre Gasly from AlphaTauri, have receded. Rossi appeared to rule out any interest in alternative drivers, in particular Gasly.
“We’re not looking at any drivers for next year,” said Rossi when asked by The Race about this possibility.
“At the moment I am considering Esteban. Fernando is here next year with us. If we want to carry on with the momentum we have, we will do that. Pierre is obviously a great driver of value but at the moment this is not on the cards.”
So does Alpine have any reason to consider an alternative to Ocon?
It would partly depend on what alternatives options become available and should a driver such as Valtteri Bottas enter the market as has been rumoured then any team would at least have to consider a driver of his ability with such a depth of knowledge from all-conquering Mercedes.
But Ocon’s own performance is the key.
The only asterisk against Ocon’s performances is that Alonso has yet to get fully into the swing of things with Alpine, particularly in qualifying.
This makes it more difficult to evaluate whether Ocon has definitely taken a step forward compared to 2020 – and if so, by how much.
However, performing well relative even to an Alonso who isn’t quite at one with the car is still an achievement.
Independent of Alonso comparisons, the signs are encouraging. Ocon struggled in the first half of last season in particular, but did improve as the year progressed.
But given Ocon is a driver of significant ability, it would be expected that he would make a stride forward this year in his second season with the team. And his record, both previously in Formula 1 and in the junior categories, meant that last season did appear to be an anomaly for a driver who impressed in his two seasons with Force India/Racing Point.
“It’s a tricky question,” said Ocon when asked by The Race if he felt his performances this year would have been at Ricciardo’s level had the Australian remained with the team.
“I feel like my performance has nothing to do with what we did for half of the year at least. I feel a lot better, I feel a lot more confident. I feel like we are setting the car up a lot better and I’ve gained a huge amount of performance with that.
“But we started to get that into the last events last year. I outqualified Daniel in Abu Dhabi, so it started to go in the right way towards the end of the year with the podium [in the Sakhir GP].
“It’s working well at the moment. Fernando is pushing me. In the practice sessions [in Monaco], he was ahead of me and we managed this weekend to make a good step going into qualifying.
“I think we’re extracting close to the maximum of the car each weekend and I want to continue like that.”
It’s impossible to benchmark Ocon against a hypothetical Ricciardo performance level, but it’s true that his 2020 season ended relatively well – even if he was still not consistently able to match his team-mate.
But there have also been changes over the winter that appear to have made Ocon far more comfortable with the team’s way of working.
Notably, his race engineer Mark Slade was replaced by Josh Peckett, who was previously Ocon’s performance engineer. Stuart Barlow is now Ocon’s performance engineer.
“He has a massive role, obviously, as he’s my race engineer,” said Ocon of Peckett’s impact.
“I have Stuart Barlow as my performance [engineer] and they formed that duo back in the Manor days as well. So we were kind of working together, they were on Pascal Wehrlein’s side back in the day but they complement each other and we make an excellent team all together.
“Motivated, young, hungry for the same aim, which is performing, doing the best we can with what we have.
“I’m very pleased with what we are building at the moment because this is what I wanted for a long time.”
Ocon’s trajectory is certainly positive and the team privately feels that he is doing a better job than last year, with the way he is working with his car crew part of the improvement.
Given the driver market has yet to fire up for 2021, there’s no immediate pressure on Alpine to complete a deal.
But based on what we’ve seen so far, Ocon appears to have built up the momentum that, if sustained in the face of Alonso getting stronger as the season progresses, appears very likely to keep him with the team.
