Ocon makes up for qualifying mistake with points in Bahrain: "It feels good after a complicated weekend"

From zero to hero. For the second time this season, Esteban Ocon finished in the Top 10 and scored big points this Sunday at the finish of the Bahrain Grand Prix. A nice reward at the end of a weekend that had started badly for the French driver. After a complicated Free Practice, the Norman driver made a mistake in Q2 and ended his qualifying in the wall at the third corner, seriously damaging his car in passing.

Forced to start in 14th place, the new driver Haas opted for an aggressive strategy at the start of the race: after gaining two positions at the start, Esteban Ocon was one of the first to stop in the pits to attempt an undercut with the medium tires. A choice that paid off as the driver from Evreux found himself 6th after the first round of stops. However, his strategy could have been ruined when, just three laps after his second stop, the safety car was deployed on track to remove debris scattered throughout the first sector.

Esteban Ocon, wearing hard tires like Pierre Gasly, decided to stay on track in order to maintain his positional advantage. And even though he was unable to resist the Red Bull de Max Verstappen, the Norman managed to maintain his 8th place with good tire management, as was already the case in Shanghai at the end of March. The result: four additional points and a nice rebound the day after his accident in Q2.

P14 ➡️ P8 🤗

Nice comeback for Esteban Ocon and the two Haas in the points 💪#BahrainGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/MiOVctXIMv

— CANAL+ F1® (@CanalplusF1) April 13, 2025

Esteban Ocon (Haas), 8th in the Bahrain GP (Canal+) : “It was crazy. It feels good after a complicated weekend. We hadn't put anything in order until now, we knew the car had pace. I made this big mistake yesterday that cost the team dearly and I'm happy to have made up for it. We maximized the result today, we couldn't have done better. A good start, a good strategy, aggressive at the start. We almost overtook Pierre [Gasly] on this strategy. We didn't have any more speed than that, and the Safety Car almost cost us dearly at the end. It benefited a lot of drivers behind but also Ollie [Bearman]. A double finish in the points for the team, we are delighted with this result. We have to continue to maximize what we have in our hands. We did it in this race, we will have to do it again next week.”

"We need to improve our consistency and performance. The window of opportunity for this car is really small. We change a lot of parts, here and there, we do a lot of testing on a lot of things. We need to level out this deficit that occurs at certain times. After this weekend, I hope we will have a better understanding of what happened at Suzuka and here. Now, I'm happy that we managed to maximize this weekend."

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