According to Szafnauer, the only weakness attributable to Esteban Ocon is taking too long to find the car’s limit at the start of a race weekend.
Aston Martin announced last week that they have signed Fernando Alonso for 2023, but it is not yet clear who will replace him in the Enstone stable.
The team hoped to be able to include reserve driver Oscar Piastri and in fact had announced it last Wednesday. However, the Australian had already signed a pre-contract with McLaren, so he immediately denied on social media the possibility of racing with the Alpine next year.
While Alpine continues to claim its rights to Piastri, and the matter is expected to be brought to the contract recognition commission, team management is also evaluating other riders.
Many of the candidates, however, have less experience than Ocon, which would therefore make him pin the team leader’s chevrons next season.
Szafnauer is convinced that Ocon has already proved his worth alongside Sergio Perez at Force India / Racing Point in 2017 and 2018.
“Esteban is a super talent,” he stressed. “I worked with him at Force India and those were days when Sergio Perez was his teammate.”
“He was as fast as Sergio, if you remember they were always close on the starting grid. Sometimes very close even in the race. And we saw what Sergio is capable of in a top team.”
“The same with Fernando, even if Fernando has the ability and the talent to be fast in the space of a very short time. Three or four laps are enough for him and he is 99% or 99.9%, with that 0.1% missing. which arrives shortly after. Esteban, on the other hand, takes a little longer to get the most out of the machine “.
“But in the end, on Saturdays and Sundays, he’s there. So he just has to learn to get there a little bit faster. But we’re working with him on that.”
“Can he lead the team? He’s definitely getting better and better. He got a win. He scored good points for us this year. And he’ll learn even more when we get to next year.”
Esteban Ocon, Alpine A522
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
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