My 100% is still not enough to match the “impressive” Ocon

Fernando Alonso says that it is still not enough to give your all to beat his “impressive” Formula 1 team-mate Esteban Ocon.

Alonso is still up to date on his return to Formula 1 this year and has been overqualified by his French teammate in three of the four races so far.

But while Ocon has certainly benefited from settling in well at Alpine, Alonso is still full of praise for his work after a sometimes challenging 2020 campaign with the squad.

“I think he’s good and we’ll see that,” said the double world champion of Ocon. “He is in very good shape and currently fully integrated into the team.

“”[He was on the] last year in Bahrain, in the last part of the championship, on the podium and now with perfect weekends. So this is very good.

“It’s impressive what he’s achieving now. I’ll give my 100%, and of course that’s not enough to be at this level at the moment, so I have to keep improving.”

However, Alonso believes it’s no surprise that Ocon is ahead of the game at the moment as the recent history of the Alpine team is full of examples of the reigning driver doing better.

“In a way, we talked about it and anticipated it a little,” added the Spaniard. “If Carlos [Sainz] came to Renault, he wasn’t as quick as [Nico] Hulkenberg.

“I remember the first few races, Daniel [Ricciardo] was arguably slower than Nico in 2019 and he was very good in 2020, his second year.

“Esteban struggled with Daniel last year and is doing well in his sophomore year, so it seems like this is a team that is a little different from the rest and you need to adapt.

“I’m trying to do it as soon as possible, but I’m not too worried. It will come very soon, if not already, because in Imola we crossed the border together and in Portimao we crossed the border together. “

Also read:

Although Alpine had a difficult Grand Prix race in Spain after an encouraging qualifying session, Alonso believes the team left Barcelona with good reason to be satisfied.

“The weekend was generally very positive,” he said. “At Portimao we were competitive but we didn’t know if it was just Portimao, it was the circuit.

“But in Barcelona we were competitive again. Let’s wait a few Grand Prix now, but I think we can be the fifth team behind Ferrari and McLaren. And that’s good news because it was like that in the first two races.” harder to be in the third quarter.

“There is still a lot to do and a lot to do, including strategy, tire understanding, etc. But it’s not that it was a surprise here, the tire. It was a risk we took because we did Wanted to collect points, so it wasn’t a complete surprise what we had on the tires. “