With another nine more race entries to his name, Esteban Ocon will be hitting an F1 milestone of sorts, albeit one that’ll likely be marked by not the greatest of feelings, for argument’s sake. So why’s that?
Truth is, when Esteban Ocon reaches his 150th Formula 1 Grand Prix entry, he’ll still be thinking about the number of podiums he has to his credit. And truth be told, if he fails to clock any to his current tally, it might actually make for a bit of a somber observation.
To put to simply, should Ocon fail to add to the 3 F1 podiums that he has already bagged, his podium-scoring average at the conclusion of his 150th GP would read rather shoddy. It would suggest, the young French driver scores a podium once in about 50 F1 races.
Who on earth, including the driver himself can be impressed by such a statistic? Having already entered no fewer than 141 F1 Grands Prix, Ocon can- and would- like to fare better.
That said, he must deliver a cracker of a race up next in Canada, which is home to one of the longest and most gruelling competitions on the annual calendar: the Montreal-bound GP that takes place at the legendary Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
But that is not the only reason why Esteban Ocon must strive to deliver a cracker of a performance in Canada. From a historical perspective, Canada hasn’t really been a successful outing or a productive hunting ground for one of F1’s noted young drivers.
Where it stands as one of the date, then Esteban Ocon has only collected a best-ever result in the form of a P6 here in Canada. As it panned out, it would be a result or a personal best score he’d emulate on one more occasion having first bagged it with Force India way back in 2017. It’s important to remember that Ocon didn’t feature in the 2019 world championship.
However, after returning to the grid in 2020, it was time for Canada to miss out for two successive years on the F1 calendar during a time where the Covid pandemic led to more race cancellations than ever experienced before. But in 2022, when Ocon hit Montreal, albeit then Alpine, Ocon replicated his 2017, aka his maiden drive at the venue in scoring a fighting sixth.
Next year, he’d end up scoring an eighth, which would also be his first season driving alongside French compatriot, Pierre Gasly. Forget a podium, the talented and aggressive Frenchman hasn’t once figured out a top four finish at the long and strenuous Canadian Grand Prix.
It’s a circuit, where in the next few hours, Ocon will be driving for the last time ever in Alpine racing overalls; his exit from the French constructor having only recently been confirmed.
This effectively means that ever since the big Ocon decision became public, the forthcoming race is the first ever Grand Prix where Ocon will be participating having absolute certainty about his imminent future ever since the dramatic events at Monaco took place.
It also means that the Evreux-born driver of an attacking pedigree will be competing against his teammate with greater intent and with little holding him back- won’t you agree?
But that being told, purely from the perspective of reminding his bashers and critics about his race craft and driving talent, it would be nice to see Ocon giving everything at a venue where, as seen in the past, he hasn’t particularly enjoyed warm sunshine where race results stand.
Could it, therefore, be a new start of sorts for the man who’s got much left to prove or will it be another episode of a low-show at a particularly fast race track punctuated by several long straights? We don’t know what’s to occur. What we know is that the man behind the famous 2023 Monaco podium will be coming hard at his critics in what lies ahead