Ocon to lead Alpine by 2023, it is now “the plan”

After the announcement of Alonso’s departure to Aston Martin in 2023, there is contractual uncertainty surrounding Oscar Piastri, and no name has been officially announced to fill the vacant seat. Some names have emerged in the press, but nothing concrete yet. One thing is certain, the Alpine seat is one of the most coveted for next season according to Szafnauer.

The driver who will sign with the French team will most likely be a second driver. Indeed, the Alpine boss wants to make Esteban Ocon a potential number 1. Szafnauer declared that the only weakness of the French driver was that he sometimes took too long to fully get into his race weekend.

At first, Alpine planned to make Oscar Piastri, the F3 and F2 champion, the successor of Fernando Alonso. It had even been announced, before he himself denied it on social media last week. The Australian would have indeed already signed a contract elsewhere, supposedly with McLaren, who would part ways with Ricciardo prematurely…

Even if Alpine remains hopeful in the Piastri deal, the management is considering the signing of other drivers. Among them, Daniel Ricciardo and Nico Hülkenberg, both former Renault drivers. However, most of the contacted drivers would seemingly have less experience than Esteban Ocon.

Szafnauer said that the French driver had proven his worth when he was Sergio Perez’s teammate at Force India, a team he had managed in the previous seasons.

Esteban is very talented. I worked with him at Force India when he had Checo as his teammate. And he was fast, he fought hard. If you remember well, they were always together on the grid.

« With Fernando too, even though Fernando has the ability and talent to pull off a big lap with the car very quickly. Alonso needs three or four laps and he’s at 99% or 99.9% and the last 0.1% comes after a few laps. Whereas Esteban needs a little more time to extract the maximum from his car. »

« But on Saturday, and then on Sunday, he is there. He needs to learn to be a little faster. But we are working on this point with him. Then, is he capable of leading a team? Of course, he is becoming stronger and stronger. He already has several races under his belt. He has scored very good points for us this year. And he will continue to learn until the next season arrives.

Esteban Ocon is still struggling to put in strong qualifying laps, but his race pace is bringing valuable points to the French team in the battle for fourth place. In the drivers’ standings, he currently holds 8th place with 58 points. He has a 17-point lead over his teammate. Will he be able to maintain his advantage and establish himself as the number one driver before the end of the season? He has nine Grand Prix races left to prove himself.