Alpine say everything they did to improve car in Monaco worked after podium

Alpine were encouraged by to continual improvements made to their car during the Monaco Grand Prix weekend which led to their first podium finish of the season, but Esteban Ocon says they “need to keep our feet to the ground.”

It marked the end of a one-and-a-half year wait for the team to return to the podium, and Ocon’s first top-five finish since last year’s Brazilian Grand Prix.

He qualified fourth, which became third after Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was penalised, making it Alpine’s best starting position for a race since the 2022 Belgian Grand Prix. However through practice last weekend, Ocon had never been higher than eighth place.

“It started off with a reasonable car on Friday morning, and honestly it’s one of those weekends where everything we did to it from his feedback just improved it a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, and obviously he had a fantastic qualifying,” Alpine’s sporting director Alan Permane said to media including RaceFans.

“That was set up from there, with a little bit of help from Ferrari, of course. But it was a result completely on merit.”

Alpine’s form has swung so far this season, with points finishes in the first two races but two weekends off the pace in Melbourne and Baku. Ocon’s team mate Pierre Gasly qualified fifth in Miami, and the team got both of their cars into the points, with the Monaco podium following three weeks later.

Ocon said “we will see” if the form of the last two races will continue into this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix at Barcelona.

“I think it’s a very different track in terms of characteristics here but clearly the car felt more alive and I had a lot more confidence in it to start the weekend,” he said.

“So we did bring some updates that were supposed to be quite small but everything we had on it goes in the right direction today.

“It definitely felt good and I hope that this is the start of something, but I think we need to keep our feet to the ground, see where we are next weekend. It’s going to be a good test, we’ll see.”

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