‘Only Oliver Bearman’s car works as it should’ -…

For the fifth time in the last six Formula 1 grands prix, Esteban Ocon failed to make it through Q1 in qualifying, setting the 18th-fastest time – penalties will see him start from 17th on the grid.

At the Belgian Grand Prix – the race that marked his Formula 1 debut just under 10 years ago, with the now-defunct Manor team – the Haas driver was once again soundly beaten in qualifying by team-mate Oliver Bearman (16th in Q1, 15th on the grid), who set a time in the first part of the session that was almost seven-tenths of a second faster.

However, despite this situation, Ocon did not seem particularly angry, either over the radio with his engineer Laura Muller after the end of Q1 or when speaking to the media as he stepped out of the cockpit.

When asked by Canal+ about his apparent calm despite his latest disappointing result, Ocon said: “No, no, [I’m not particularly angry] because we knew it was going to be a difficult session.”

The 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix winner explained that his VF-26 is suffering from a top-speed issue, which the team seems unable to resolve.

Esteban Ocon, Haas F1 Team (Photo by: Alex Bierens de Haan / LAT Images via Getty Images)

“The team were quite happy with my lap because we’re really losing out on the straights,” he explained. “We’re losing more than five tenths on the straights, so inevitably, with this issue we haven’t been able to sort out since the start of the weekend, it’s tricky. So, we tried to stay a bit closer to the slipstream to see if we could minimise the problem on the final run.

"The lap was decent; I’ve done plenty of laps like that here, and it’s always worked out, [sometimes] in Q3, always putting in good laps – fifth last year, for example," he recalled, whilst adding that he was also suffering from an issue that was causing him to lose a bit of downforce at the rear.

“So, it was tricky; we’ve also got a load problem at the rear of the car on top of that, so it’s quite unstable. We’ve been struggling since the start of the weekend; we knew it was going to be tricky, there wasn’t much more we could do.”

When asked if he’d helped his team-mate by giving him a tow, Ocon denied it.

“No. In the pit lane, we start on the same side, so that works in his favour 80% of the time,” he smiled. “But no. In fact, we stick to the same order.

“I had three cars in front of me – [Liam] Lawson and I were roughly the same distance behind – and, yeah, unfortunately, I’m losing those 3–4 km/h compared to where we should be… Only Ollie's car works as it should, so that’s just how it is.”