Ocon puts himself back on Mercedes' radar: "We know what he can do"

At the moment all attention is focused on George Russell, but it was another Mercedes talent that was on the podium in Sakhir: Esteban Ocon. Toto Wolff is very happy with the progress the Frenchman is making.

Mercedes talents

While Red Bull promotes one junior after another in Formula 1, juniors at Mercedes need a little more patience. For example, Pascal Wehrlein was pushed aside after a few years of service and Esteban Ocon and George Russell are patiently waiting for their chance.

Whereas everyone is now looking to Russell after the great performance, Ocon is still in the Mercedes set-up and with a expiring contract at the end of 2021, he is also a candidate to drive for Mercedes in 2022. The Frenchman, however, has somewhat disappeared from the radar because of Daniel Ricciardo's strong performance, but a podium in Sakhir has changed that.

Ocon the podium

''I am very happy to see Esteban on the podium because he has had a tough year. In half of the qualifying, it was only a tiny gap between Daniel and Esteban and also in the race things could have gone differently," says Wolff according to Motorsport-total.com. GPblog kept track of the differences between the drivers this year and indeed it shows that Ocon lost an average of 0.284s per qualifying session on Ricciardo, but in the meantime he is 15-1 behind. 

''We know what Esteban can do with his talent and sometimes you just have to give talents some time to really get the performance out of it. I am curious how he will develop further, because he really deserved that podium and Renault also deserves to be there," concludes the team boss of Mercedes.