‘Feeling alive again’… 27-year-old F1 driver absolutely delighted his luck changed in Las Vegas

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Alpine driver Esteban Ocon was over the moon with his performance in Las Vegas last weekend and believes his luck is finally starting to change.

Ocon was speaking on the F1 Nation Podcast after his second-best finish of the season.

The 27-year-old pulled off a fantastic podium finish in Monte Carlos but has struggled in the second half of the season.

New teammate Pierre Gasly had a healthy lead over him in the Drivers’ Championship going into last weekend’s race.

However, the former Red Bull driver had issues with his car and dropped out of the points in the final laps as Oscar Piastri carved his way through the grid.

Ocon, on the other hand, held onto a fantastic fourth place despite seemingly ignoring a radio message to hold position which he explained after the race.

Alpine are going to finish sixth in the Constructors’ Championship but will be buoyed by Ocon’s performance in Las Vegas.

They’re the only team with a Renault power unit on the grid and that has hampered them at times this season.

But they’ve got two very talented drivers and Ocon has shown that he can race against the very best.

Alpine driver Ocon delighted with Las Vegas race

Talking about his fantastic performance in the Nevada desert, Ocon said: “I’m feeling alive again, let’s call it like that. It’s been a tough six races I would say, a lot of things went wrong for us.

“A lot of incidents, a lot of points left on the table you know with a DNF and what happened in Singapore, we didn’t seem to catch a break.

“Yesterday [in qualifying] was a difficult moment to swallow because we knew we had the pace to do something good and something more on top.

“But yeah, never give up really, that’s probably the sentence of the last couple of weeks, we kept believing in our work and what we were doing.

“We kept believing that it was the right thing that we were doing and that things were going to come to us and the planets did align today and finally we got the results that we deserve.”

Alpine will hope Ocon can carry the form he showed in Las Vegas into the final race in Abu Dhabi.

He’s now just four points behind Pierre Gasly and will be full of confidence this weekend.

It might be a case of whichever driver can adapt to the huge change in time zones will succeed.

Ocon has spent the last few months testing 2024’s car in the simulator and he’ll hope that work pays off next season.