10 Esteban Ocon
RE-ENTRY
His 2022 can probably be summed up as ‘enigmatic’. There was no victory this time, but Ocon still produced some stunning performances. Yet too many were forgettable – and then there was his part the intra-Alpine war in Brazil. A theme to watch in 2023…
But before getting there, assessing Ocon’s 2022 goes like this: he beat Alonso by 11 points and led their qualifying head-to-head 10-9 (with Alpine’s reliability issues removed), but also had fewer retirements and lacked his team-mate’s Q3 stunners in Canada and (to a lesser extent) Australia and Singapore.
In Ocon’s qualifying efforts, particularly in the mid-season run, he struggled taming his A522’s loose rear and on many occasions across the whole season he lacked Alonso’s relentless race pace. Plus, there were two botched and penalised attacks (on Mick Schumacher in Bahrain and Yuki Tsunoda in France), and his defence against Lewis Hamilton in Monaco was pretty shocking and also penalised.
But he did do something Alonso seemingly couldn’t, which was more frequently nurse an engine-issue-hobbled Alpine and still score decent results, such as he did in Australia and Mexico. And he could be excellent in battle too, with his rises in Spain and Belgium – the latter from an engine-change grid penalty – featuring fine overtaking moves, while his dive on Valtteri Bottas in Mexico was brilliant.
Fifth in Austria capped an excellent weekend, but Ocon’s 2022 highlight was Japan. He was best of the rest in qualifying (heading both Mercedes) and held off Hamilton, this time with beautiful defending, for lap after lap in the wet, placing his car inch-perfectly under massive
