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F1 Italian GP: Ocon upbeat despite curtailed FP2

Esteban Ocon says F1 is coming easier to him in his second Grand Prix weekend despite missing out on a sizeable chunk of FP2 running time due to a power outage with his Manor.

The French driver, who came into the Manor fold replacing Rio Haryanto from the Belgian Grand Prix until the end of the season, feels overall it was a positive Friday practice day both for him and Manor even though he dropped to P18 having missed the second half of the afternoon session with the mechanical breakdown.

While starting a second flying lap on the super-softs, having just set his fastest lap of the session, Ocon's Mercedes-powered Manor instantly lost power coming out of the first chicane and despite getting the power unit restarted he couldn't engage drive and pulled over to be recovered from the trackside.

"Just a power cut and I didn't have any power anymore. I don't know exactly what it is, everything switched off," Ocon said "That's how it is, it's motorsport, I miss some driving time that's never great, bit at the end there is more opportunities tomorrow when I will drive again in practice.

"It's fine, it happened, there's never a good moment to happen, but it happened not at the worst moment."

Reflecting on his second F1 race weekend, Ocon says he is feeling more comfortable and confident both in the cockpit of the Manor trying to extract the maximum performance from the car and working with the new team and personnel.

"Everything feels easier, there's nothing new anymore," he said. "You expect things and we know how the people work, you can also expect more things from the car. You know how it's going to react, it feels much easier and I feel much better now than the previous race." 

Zdroj: crash.net