Ocon: We weren’t as fast as Ferrari or McLaren in the race

The Frenchman was impressive in qualifying for a second consecutive weekend at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, but struggled to make the team's ambitious one-stop strategy work, with Sergio Perez, Daniel Ricciardo, Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris all able to finish ahead of him despite starting further down the grid.

Ocon can take some satisfaction with the two points he was able to take away from the race, his teammate Fernando Alonso was 17th, but this was perhaps not the result Alpine were looking for after such a promising qualifying session that saw both drivers in the top 10.

“It was a tough race today," he said. "We have a few things to review as we weren’t as fast as the Ferraris or the McLarens in the race.

"A positive thing is that last year here, we didn’t score points and this year we come away with two. It’s not ideal after qualifying, but we’ll take it and move on to the next race. We have more work to do on race pace and, as always, some things to discuss to improve ourselves.

"We’ll see how we do around Monaco, it’s great that we’re going back there, and we go there with some motivation to have a better result.”

Alpine executive director Marcin Budkowski echoed the words of Ocon in terms of the deficit to Ferrari and McLaren, but praised the Frenchman's tyre management skills.

"After a very positive qualifying, this race result clearly was not what we were hoping for," Budkowski said.

"We lost some positions at the start, two for Esteban and one for Fernando. We were pretty committed to a one-stop strategy and we tried to make it work. However, it was quite tough to get to the end on the second set of tyres, with Esteban able to salvage two points after a brave last couple of laps.

"Fernando ran out of tyres at the end, leaving him out of the points. We didn’t have the pace to fight with Ferrari or McLaren in the race today, so that gives us an area to focus on and find further improvements. Nevertheless, we’ve scored two points on the teams behind us in the Constructors’ Championship. Overall, though, we were hoping for more from this race.”