Ocon jokes: 'Didn't want to crash Vettel out in his last race'

Esteban Ocon is relieved and satisfied after the final race of the season. After the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the Alpine driver told GPBlog and others how happy he is to have finished fourth among constructors.

Alpine went into the final race with a reasonable lead over rival McLaren but Fernando Alonso's retirement made it look like things were going to get tighter than the team would have liked. In the end, it turned out to be not so bad: although McLaren managed to catch up slightly, Alpine still finished in fourth place with a fourteen-point lead.

Ocon is very happy about it. "All the goals we set for ourselves have been achieved," he told reporters. "We finished fourth in the championship, thank God. I think I lost two and a half kilos this weekend just because of the stress. It's also my personal best season in Formula 1, so I hope we can continue this next year and close the gap even further."

Extra stress in duel with Vettel

Ocon was battling the retiring Sebastian Vettel for much of the race. That caused an unexpected amount of stress, Ocon explained: "It was a nice duel with Seb but very stressful. I obviously didn't want to be the one to knock him out at his last race. But it was a good duel, a tough duel, exactly as you would expect from Seb."

Asked if he really made a conscious decision not to hit Vettel, Ocon replied laconically: "I made a conscious decision to keep him behind me."

Editor-in-chief Tim Kraaij reported from Abu Dhabi for this article.