Ocon: "This is what I wanted for a long time"

Esteban Ocon is having a great start to his 2021 season. He beat his new teammate Fernando Alonso and according to the French driver, this is partly due to the excellent relationship he has with his engineers.

Currently, Josh Peckett is Ocon's race engineer. Peckett is not the only one working closely with the Frenchman, as Ocon has Stuart Barlow as his performance engineer. "They've been basically forming that duo back in the Manor days as well," Ocon explains at Motorsport.com.

"We were working kind of together. They were on Pascal Wehrlein's side back in the day, but they are complementing each other," Ocon continued. The Alpine driver is very happy with Barlow and Peckett and is pleased with the motivated and young team. "I am very pleased with what we are building at the moment because this is what I wanted for a long time."

So far, he manages to keep two-time world champion and new teammate, Fernando Alonso, behind him in the standings. A year ago, Ocon was up against Daniel Ricciardo, but he had significantly more trouble with that. "We started to get that into the last events last year. And I out-qualified Daniel in Abu Dhabi, also. So it started to come on the right way towards the end of the year with the podium", concludes Ocon.