Esteban Ocon reveals the reason behind his shock retirement at the 2023 Italian Grand Prix
Esteban Ocon has revealed the reason behind his retirement from the 2023 Italian GP.
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Esteban Ocon (Via Imago)
Esteban Ocon and Alpine didn’t exactly have the best of weekends at the 2023 Italian Grand Prix. While the race was being dominated by Max Verstappen, Ocon quietly pulled up into the pits with just 12 laps remaining. The French race-car driver was running in 15th place before he pitted and retired his car. He later revealed the safety issues that factored into making this decision.
The Monza race weekend didn’t go as planned for Alpine as both the drivers failed to make it out of Q1. With Monza being a high speed circuit, Alpine’s lack of engine power was a real disadvantage. Ocon’s teammate, Pierre Gasly went on to finish the race in 15th and termed it as a “super painful experience” for the team. Esteban Ocon further went on to give his reasoning behind their woes.
In an interview, here is what he had to say. “For safety reasons. We had the steering locking into corners and we didn’t want the steering to lock completely. So, it was just safer to retire the car and not have more issues. That ended our weekend which has been a tough one,” he said. “There’s going to be plenty of analysis and we have a week when we’re not racing, so we can focus exactly on what went wrong and come back from it again,” he continued.
Esteban Ocon has had five retirements so far this year
Alpine’s reliability issues are really showing as Esteban Ocon’s exit from the Italian GP marked his 5th retirement this season. Out of fourteen races, this number is painstakingly close to almost having a 50% finishing rate. Compared to its competitors, Alpine is suffering. Having had the strongest engines at one point of time, the team have gone onto have the slowest and weakest ones in the current day and age.
On the other hand, Alpine’s Ex partner Red Bull is doing great with their engines having partnered up with Ford for 2026. Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez went on to grab a 1-2 finish at Ferrari’s home turf in Monza with Max breaking Sebastian Vettel’s record of most consecutive race wins. It will be interesting to see what’s going to happen in the remainder of the second half of the season for Alpine.
In case you missed it:
- Max Verstappen goes back on statement about his F1 retirement plans after Lewis Hamilton signs new contract with Mercedes
- Aston Martin team boss defends Lance Stroll following poor performances at the Dutch GP, claims “reliability issues” always affecting the Canadian
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Varad Joshi
(940 Articles Published)