Esteban Ocon criticises ‘old school’ F1 rule after Dutch GP frustration

Esteban Ocon suggested F1 had an “old school rule” after his lap one overtake at the Dutch Grand Prix ultimately meant nothing.

The Haas driver had got round Alex Albon only to be moved back behind him following Max Verstappen’s crash.

Esteban Ocon left frustrated with F1 old school rule

Verstappen crashed at the end of lap one and as the red flag was waved, the FIA reverted the order back to how it was at the end of the opening lap.

Unfortunately for Ocon, that meant he was put back behind the driver he had just overtaken.

“I overtook Alex, yeah, but I had the right because it was green,” he said of his overtake. “What was a big shame is that you have to take all these risks, you are playing with either getting a penalty or not.

“I was not having a penalty, but it was very tight because I just passed him when he was green, and then they put you back at the race start.

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“I mean, it’s been like that forever, but really, if I was 20 meters earlier than I would have had the place, but we still raced for one and a half sectors. The red flag only came after Turn 5.

“So we passed Sector 1, and we were, you know, getting into Sector 2 so I should have started in front of Alex because that changed my race.”

Ocon ended up retiring from the race, registering his first DNF of the season after what he described as a “bulletproof” car.

“After that, obviously, you know, there’s a lot of things that maybe we could have done differently with strategy.

“I think Fernando [Alonso] did a really, really good strategy. I don’t think we could have done the same one without degradation.

“But there are things that we can look into to do a better job. But it’s the first reliability problem so far this season. It’s been bulletproof on that side.

“Obviously, it’s the two cars, so it’s not ideal, you know, for this race, but we’ll look into everything, and hopefully next weekend, there should be some upgrades. We should be more competitive. I hope. So let’s see if we can get everything together.”

Ocon is on three points so far this season having scored at least 23 in each of his previous eight full seasons in F1.

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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