“We just had a fantastic collaboration altogether” – Esteban Ocon delighted Alpine teammate Fernando Alonso has broken the myth that he is difficult to work with.
Fernando Alonso has a media-created reputation of being difficult to work in a team, mostly down to his tense, fraught relationship with former McLaren teammate Lewis Hamilton.
No wonder then that Esteban Ocon was apprehensive about how his will be with the Spaniard on his return to the Renault fold this term, this time under the guise of Alpine.
(Pleasantly) surprisingly for him, the Frenchman connected beautifully with the two-time world champ, with the duo assisting each other on the track and off it.
This bodes really well for the French major, as they look to rise up the standings in the seasons to come, and compete with the current Big 4 of Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull, and McLaren.
“Yes, I heard a lot of that for sure. A lot of people said, obviously, that Fernando was very difficult to work with, that he had a reputation, to breaking team-mates and all that, but I wanted to see it from my eyes.
“I wanted to see if what people were saying was true, and in the end, it wasn’t. We just had a fantastic collaboration altogether.
“Just the way Fernando thinks out of the box, where some of the drivers will not think about, or even the team will not think about some stuff, sometimes.
“It’s pushing the limit to strategies or how we can optimise everything. In that regard, I’ve definitely learned a lot.”
