Esteban Ocon defended his controversial overtake on Alexander Albon during the Dutch Grand Prix and criticised the Formula 1 rule that sent him back behind the Williams driver for the second race start.
Max Verstappen crashed out and Gabriel Bortoleto spun 360 degrees on the opening lap at a slightly damp Zandvoort circuit. As the yellow-flag zone ended, Ocon accelerated faster than Albon and moved into 13th place shortly after crossing the start-finish line. Albon objected to the move over the team radio.
“I’m sorry, but what Esteban did is crazy,” Albon ranted on the radio. “He’s overtaking me in the middle of the crash.”
Although Albon was not asked about the incident during his post-race media session, Ocon was questioned about the overtake and insisted that he had not breached the rules.
“I overtook Alex, yeah, but I had the right, because it was green,”
the Haas driver said. However, the grid for the second start was determined by the classification at the end of the first lap, making Ocon’s overtake irrelevant to the restart order.
“What was a big shame is that you have to take all these risks, you know?” Ocon added. “You’re playing with either getting a penalty or not. I was not having a penalty, but it was very tight, because I just passed him when it was green. And then they put you back at the race start.
“It’s been like that forever, but… Really, if that was 20 metres earlier, then I was having the place. But we still raced, like, for one-and-a-half sector. The red flag only came after Turn 5, you know? So, we passed sector one, and we were getting into sector two. So, I should have started in front of Alex – because that changed my race.”
Ocon spent the early stages of the race behind Albon before making an early pit stop on lap 16 in an attempt to find clear air. He had returned to 14th when he retired on lap 53 with a power unit problem.
“After that, obviously, there’s a lot of things that maybe we could have done differently, with strategy, etc,”
the Frenchman admitted.
“Fernando [Alonso] did a really, really good strategy, I don’t think we could have done the same one without degradation. But there are things that we can look into to do a better job.”
Ocon said Formula 1 should be able to use a more current race classification when forming the grid for a restart, rather than relying on the order recorded at the end of the previous lap.
“We are not going to believe that in Formula 1 we don’t have timing loops every 20 metres, you know? It’s a very old-school rule, really,”
he continued.
“I said it on the radio, let’s not make Alex go in front again at the restart. Because that should not be the case. And for some reason I felt it, that they were going to put him in front again. They still take the line, which is like two kilometres back. It shouldn’t be like that, it should be the last moment.”
