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Esteban Ocon does not think Alpine is in a position to win races at the moment. The French driver won his first race in F1 with Alpine in 2021 but that was more or less the result of a first-lap carnage caused by Valtteri Bottas in Mercedes.
Since then, Alpine could not even score a podium last season and only had one front-row start with Fernando Alonso.
Esteban Ocon will team up with fellow Frenchman Pierre Gasly at Alpine this season. Gasly is also a race winner with AlphaTauri at Monza in 2020 and will be looking to match and even beat Esteban Ocon at Alpine.
Ocon, when questioned by Sky Sports if he wanted to win races for the team before Gasly, poured cold water on the suggestion as he felt that the team was not yet in a position to fight for race wins.
Esteban Ocon said:
"It doesn't matter, of course I want to win, he wants to win as well but where we are at the moment, we can't do it, we don't have the performance yet to be able to win races at every event."
"So we need to work together with the team to be able to create ourselves those opportunities but so far it's gonna be still a long road ahead. We are conscious of that and we are working on it."
New Alpine a good evolution of last year: Esteban Ocon
While discussing the team's prospects this season, Esteban Ocon admitted that while the gap to the top three teams looks huge at the moment, Alpine brought a good evolution last year. Speaking about the car, he said:
"It is true that obviously we have a gap to close but we've driven the car a little bit this year on our filming day and I have to say it is a good evolution of last year."
He added:
"I'm proud of what the guys have achieved this winter, it's much more detailed, it looks much more clean, the details and all the linkage, you know, every part is very very nice and can't wait to get started in Bahrain and see where we go but obviously we need to wait until everyone puts maximum power and get ready for qualifying. But up until then, I'm very pleased with the job that the guys did."
Ocon will be looking to build on the strong season he had in 2022 where he outscored Fernando Alonso.
