Ocon joined the list of first lap retirements in Monaco after a clash with Gasly
Esteban Ocon says “mistakes happen” after a first lap clash with Alpine team mate Pierre Gasly led to his retirement from the Monaco GP.
Having started 10th and 11th the two French drivers made contact at Portier, just before the tunnel, as Ocon tried to find a way past. His car was then launched up in the air before a hard landing.
A red flag for the Perez/Magnussen incident earlier in the lap gave the Enstone team a chance to repair the car, but the damage was too serious for Ocon to be able to continue.
Gasly took the restart and eventually finished where he had qualified, in 10th. While ultimately the incident didn’t cost the team points it will have ramped up tensions in the camp.
“Just it’s an unfortunate incident,” said Ocon when asked by this writer about the contact.
“Obviously not good to be retiring the car with a long race after that. But yeah, we basically put the car back in the garage to try to repair.
“Unfortunately there was too much damage sustained. And we were not able to go back again. So a chaotic first lap.
“So if the damage wasn’t as bad as it was – unfortunately, the gearbox was the biggest damage – we would have been able to come back and be in P11. Gearbox, suspension arms, but the gearbox was the main problem.”
Asked about the difficulty of racing his team mate he said: “You have to take care, but at the same time we are doing 120% to be trying to get inside the top 10, for me, for Pierre. We saw it yesterday, we pushed the limit a lot in qualifying. Mistakes happen. That’s it.”
Ocon had a hard landing, and while immediately after the race he had no issue he admitted that he might eventually feel some pain.
“We’ll see when I get cold,” he said. “I had that one in Budapest. I felt it for a week. I think this one would be better, I think the difference here is that the suspension broke. So it probably gave me some elasticity on the landing.”
Adam Cooper F1 