Esteban Ocon is to get a new Alpine chassis for this weekend’s British Grand Prix, the team has confirmed.
After a strong start that saw the Frenchman outshine teammate Fernando Alonso, the story has been the exact opposite since Monaco, with Ocon failing to score since finishing P9 in the Principality.
Ocon also failed to make it out of Q1 in qualifying on both weekends in Austria, before retiring on Lap 1 of the second race after contact with Antonio Giovinazzi at Turn 3.
“Obviously, I’m disappointed but I think we have to turn the page,” he commented.
“We have to restart from zero, reset, prepare for Silverstone the best way we can, but yeah, let’s forget those last two weekends, regroup, and come back stronger at Silverstone.”
To make matters worse for Ocon, his dip came just as Alpine re-signed him on a three-year deal prior to the French GP in a nod to his impressive first five races.
And asked what had caused his drop in performance, the 24-year-old replied: “Well, it is difficult to answer to your question.
“We see a few things, and we are seeing some deficit, but it is hard to place the finger on exactly what it is.
“As I said also we don’t want to give information on what it could be because it is already hard enough to put the finger on it, so I don’t want to place myself onto that, but we will start from fresh at Silverstone, change as many parts as we can on the car, and hopefully come back much stronger.
“But for sure to be one second slower on the first run compared to Fernando, it is too big, the difference, so there is definitely something that was not working right and that we need to understand.”
Now that new car will be provided by Alpine, who voiced confidence in Ocon to turn his fortunes around.
“Esteban had two difficult races in Austria and we’re still investigating whether there are any technical reasons behind it,” Executive Director Marcin Budkowski said.
“To eradicate any doubt, the team has made the decision to make extensive changes to his car for Silverstone, including a new chassis.
“Esteban performed very strongly at the start of the season and qualified the car on the third row of the grid on merit at two races in a row just a few weekends ago, so we are working together to make sure he bounces back, and this weekend is the perfect opportunity to do that.”
Alpine also head to Britain hoping the fast, sweeping curves of Silverstone will suit their car better than the Red Bull Ring.
“It’s good that we’re heading to a completely different circuit, taking on a new challenge and having a reset,” Ocon said in his preview.
“The team and I have been working very hard behind the scenes to see what we can do to improve our performance.
“I know we’ll come back to the level we had at the start of the season and the hard work will only continue until we achieve that and even go beyond.”