Esteban Ocon shares what he learned from working with Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes

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Alpine driver Esteban Ocon has shared that he learned from working closely with Lewis Hamilton during his time with Mercedes.

The Frenchman was the reserve driver for the Silver Arrows before joining Renault in 2020 and has been on the grid ever since.

Speaking on the High Performance Podcast, Ocon shared what habits he learned from the seven-time world champion.

Ocon shares what he learned from working with Hamilton

There aren’t many better drivers in the history of Formula 1 to shadow than Lewis Hamilton.

As soon as he arrived on the grid with McLaren it was clear he was a special talent.

After winning his first title with the team, he made the bold move of joining Mercedes despite the fact they hadn’t won a race since their return to F1.

It turned out to be an inspired decision with the team growing alongside Hamilton and dominating the sport.

Esteban Ocon was coming through the ranks at Mercedes at the time and is still technically on their books.

After making his debut with Manor in 2016, he spent two seasons with Force India before taking a year out.

Ocon got the chance to work closely with Hamilton at that time and learned an awful lot from the Brit.

He’s now got more than 130 Grand Prix starts to his name and a single win for Alpine at the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix.

Ocon was working with the best at Mercedes

Talking about his time with Hamilton, Ocon said: “I remember Lewis coming from different marketing events and all these things at a race weekend, Lewis is a very busy man.

“Apart from racing that’s some of the differences compared to some drivers who are more focused on the race track.

“He’s got a very busy life in general and seeing how he switches focus from one thing to another, that kind of amazed me that he was straight away on the point, back with his engineer after something completely different and he didn’t take 10 minutes to re-focus.

“He always had his paper board with notes, and he was always having notes not to forget things from one year to another or from one session to another and this is what I do as well now.

“I was not doing notes before then, and now I’ve got all my notes inside my phone.”

Hamilton and Ocon are now racing against each other – although not as closely as the Frenchman would like – and he’s putting to good use what he learned from the multiple world champion.

Ocon bizarrely snubbed Hamilton when naming the most naturally gifted drivers on the grid right now.

He’s one of several drivers linked with replacing the experienced Brit when he heads to Ferrari in 2025.