Esteban Ocon insists Alpine are not punishing him for his collision with his team mate at the last round by making him miss first practice for the Canadian Grand Prix.
However Ocon indicated the decision to put Jack Doohan in his car was taken after the previous race, as the penalty he received there was taken into consideration.
Alpine announced yesterday Doohan, its reserve driver, will take over Ocon’s car for the first practice session tomorrow. All teams are required to run a driver who has started no more than two grands prix in each of their cars in one first practice session during the season.
Ocon said he’s “prepared the same way as I’ve done to race in Canada” this weekend. “I’ve seen some various talking things about obviously Jack coming as a punishment or something but it’s not the case,” he told Sky.
The Monaco Grand Prix stewards gave Ocon a five-place grid penalty for causing a collision with Pierre Gasly on the first lap of the race.
“We’ve decided that it was a good time, with my penalty, that the track [is] obviously quite green [on Friday] in the beginning, and that I had to give [up] an FP1 this year. So we’ve done that here and I hope that Jack can provide some good feedback for the rest of the weekend for the team.”
Alpine team principal Bruno Famin originally threatened “consequences” for Ocon over his collision with Gasly. The team subsequently announced they had decided not to renew his contract next year.
Ocon denied any connection between the decision and the Monaco crash. “A group like Renault doesn’t take decisions on single moments like that,” he said.
“For us, it was important that we’ve discussed for several months and we decided together not to continue. It’s no secret that we’ve been talking with Alpine and various other teams as well.
“I spent five years with this team achieving great things and having some more difficult moments as well. But I’m proud of what I’ve achieved with this team and it’s time for me to have other challenges, exciting challenges. And I think it was definitely the right time that we decided to end our relationship.”
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
2024 Canadian Grand Prix
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at RaceFans…