Ocon sings Müller's praises: "I really enjoy working with her"

After five Grands Prix, Esteban Ocon begins to find his feet within his new stable, Haas. While the Frenchman hasn't had the easiest start to the season, with inconsistent performances and a lack of consistency over the weekends, he continues to acclimatize to his new environment and his new work colleagues. In particular, with his new race engineer: Laura Müller, the first woman to hold this position in Formula 1The German is also discovering this new role within the American team – she was a performance engineer until last year – and inevitably, it takes time for the driver and the engineer to find their rhythms.

However, while the results have been mixed so far – 14 points scored but only two top 10s and no Q3 finishes in the five Grands Prix – Esteban Ocon is delighted with the relationship he has with his new engineer. “I really enjoy working with Laura. She is an excellent engineer, confides the Norman in the Beyond the Grid podcast. She has a lot of experience in different categories. She has done DTM, I did DTM, so we have that in common. But she's done a lot of different categories, and her trajectory is very impressive. It's great to work with her. The number of hours she puts into her work is very, very impressive. She doesn't count her hours."

“I remember at Suzuka we had a tough race, but we still had meetings and debriefs because it wasn’t the way we wanted to perform and she didn’t get up to get a sandwich or a drink for probably the whole day, remembers Esteban Ocon, impressed by his sidekick's devotionShe told me: 'Esteban, I'll probably go eat now because it's 20:00 p.m.'. I asked him: 'You haven't eaten yet?' and she answers me: 'No', because she didn't want to, because she was fully into her work."

Haas, "a big family" for Ocon

After five seasons spent with Alpine, with a tumultuous end to the adventure between the two parties, Esteban Ocon discovers a completely new environment at Banbury, more confidential. This does not bother the Évreux native who appreciates working in this kind of structure under the leadership of Ayao Komatsu, the Haas Team Principal.

“The first impression I had of the team was that of a big family, says Esteban Ocon. This team has really welcomed me, so I felt at home straight away. It's definitely a fresh start for me. I feel like I've fitted in really well with everyone, and everyone is hungry and motivated to deliver results. They take pride in everything they do when they do it. It's great because if you're not proud of the work you do, there's no point in doing it. It's really fantastic to be part of such a team and to hopefully improve further this year. The atmosphere, the feeling of being in a family, it's all very much like the Force India days, but you don't feel small. This team feels like a big team because of what they achieve."

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