Ocon explains what he learned from Verstappen and Hamilton

Esteban Ocon battled for the Formula 3 title with Max Verstappen and learned a lot from Lewis Hamilton as Mercedes' reserve driver. In the High Performance Podcast, Ocon explains what he learned from the two and which drivers he attributes the most talent from the current F1 grid.

Ocon previously explained why he found it somewhat "unfair" that Max Verstappen was offered an F1 seat at the end of 2014, and he did not even seem to have the chance to keep racing. Ocon won the F3 title, Verstappen finished third. Still, Ocon argues that he learned a thing or two from Verstappen that year.

"I was not in the same team at the time so it's a little bit harder. But the good thing is that I knew how Max [Verstappen] was racing in go-kart and I knew from go-kart how not to attack him, and where to attack him. I knew how he was going to be closing the door there or not closing the door there. I knew how to race against someone when you’re racing for a championship [and that] is very important. It's something I miss now because I’m not racing at the front," Ocon said.

Who Ocon considers the best F1 drivers

Ocon also spent a year on the sidelines. The Frenchman seemed likely to get his hands on the seat at Renault but saw that chance disappear when the team attracted Daniel Ricciardo. At Mercedes, Ocon was assigned the reserve role, where he could learn a lot from Lewis Hamilton.

"Lewis [Hamilton] is a very busy man aside from racing. That's a difference compared to some drivers who are more focused on the racetrack. Seeing how he switched his focus from one thing to another…that kind of amazed me. He was straight away on point back with his engineer after something completely different. He didn't take 10 minutes to refocus and rework with his engineers because you don't have time to do that, and he always had his paper boards with notes. He was always having notes not to forget things from one year to another or from one session to another and this is what I do as well now. I was not taking notes before then and now I have all my notes inside my phone," he added.

Yet Hamilton is not the one who mentions Ocon in one of the final questions. He is asked which two drivers, besides Ocon himself, have the most natural talent on the current F1 grid: "Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen," Ocon stayed. Why? "I've raced with Charles since 2005 and Max since 2010. It doesn't matter what conditions we had, always neck and neck or in the top three, always," Ocon concluded.