Esteban Ocon blames Alpine’s ’40-second’ mistake for Q2 exit

Esteban Ocon said his Q2 exit was partly his fault, partly the team’s as they failed to find a replacement front wing in time.

The Frenchman went off at the corner with no name and hit the barrier hard with the right-side of his A523, shredding his front wing in the process.

There was plenty of time left in the session for Ocon to get another run in but to his dismay, he was left waiting in the pits for his team to find a replacement part.

Esteban Ocon stuck with 40-second wait

Speaking afterwards, Ocon said he was waiting for up to 40 seconds for his team to locate a new front wing.

“Yeah, it was very tricky, but we were on for a very good one,” he told F1.com. “Unfortunately, that mistake is on me. Obviously, I missed the corner.

“But we had plenty of time to go again if we had managed to change the front wing. Unfortunately, the front wing wasn’t ready and it took like 30 seconds or 40 seconds to find it.

“From there, obviously, we couldn’t go again and we couldn’t retry. So mistake on my side, mistake on the team side.”

“It’s not good for us today. It’s a mistake that I don’t accept. I don’t want to be doing these things.

“I do them very rarely but when it happens, we need to be on top of them and we haven’t been on top from one side or the other. My side or the team’s side today and we missed it.”

Whether Ocon would have had the pace or not to reach Q3 is a different story with his team-mate Pierre Gasly also exiting at the same stage.

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It is not a result Alpine would have wanted in what has been a dramatic day. Earlier, they announced that team principal Otmar Szafnauer and sporting director Alan Permane had lost their jobs in what the team described as a mutual agreement.

Szafnauer is in place for the Belgian Grand Prix before Bruno Famin takes over as interim team principal.

Alpine have scored zero points in the last two races with both cars DNFing in the British and Hungarian Grand Prix.