Esteban Ocon says eighth place ‘like a victory’ after back of grid start

Ocon put in a great drive to bag points for Alpine

Ocon managed to get in the points in Miami (Getty Images)

Esteban Ocon says his eighth place finish at the Miami Grand Prix felt like a “victory” after starting at the back of the grid.

The Alpine driver performed well to bag four points for his team and he said it meant more as there was a “mountain to climb” in the fifth race of the season.

“I am delighted, I think it is a victory for us,” he told Motorsport.com. “There was clearly a mountain to climb for all of us, but I think from the strategy to the radio calls, the tyre management, everything was perfect today. And to end up in the points being 50% physically as well, for me it’s like a win.

“It is a different challenge for sure, it can go wrong, it can go right. Today it went right. But it’s not very enjoyable as I said to race being 50% physically. It’s as hard as Singapore here in terms of humidity and heat.”

He started at the back of the grid after a crash in qualifying meant he didn’t record a time. Ocon attributed his success to different tyre use.

“We knew what we had to do,” said Ocon. “We wanted to go very long with the hards, we wanted to get this tyre to last long, so I was managing quite a bit at the start.

“It was harder than expected, I thought the tyre was never going to switch on to be fair, but it did, so that was good. We were not very fast at the start, and then the pace increased slowly, slowly, and we became very quick in comparison to the other cars.”