How binge-watching is helping Ocon prepare for F1's returning star

If you want to be a successful Formula 1 driver, then there is no option other than to work hard and leave no stone unturned in that bid to unlock every ounce of performance. It is as true for world champions like Lewis Hamilton as it is for youngsters just starting out in their grand prix career.

Sometimes, though, the efforts to improve your armoury as a driver can take a left-field turn away from the standard of studying data, driving the sim or lengthy calls with your engineers. Now, for example, we can add to that list of options a bit of binge watching too.

For Esteban Ocon, who has been working super hard to get fully on top of his game at Renault this season, has found himself sat on his sofa at home in front of the television in a bid to lay the groundwork against his team-mate next year. Ocon knows that he will face perhaps the toughest challenge of his career when Fernando Alonso arrives at Renault. So, to help him better understand Alonso, he's taken to watching the Spaniard's recent docu-series to prepare for what he is going up against.

He is under no illusion that anything less than performing to his maximum in 2021 will not be good enough if he is going to keep up the momentum he is now building at Renault. Speaking exclusively to Autosport, Ocon says: "In Formula 1, you need to be on your A game all the time. There is no room for being a B at any time.

"I think Fernando's going to be, for sure, an extremely strong team-mate like Daniel [Ricciardo] is. I mean, he's very involved now recently. Fernando has been testing the car, and he has been getting closer and closer to being back in the seat. So he will arrive and be ready for sure.

"That's how he is; that's how competitive he is. And I'm watching his series actually on Amazon, just to find out about the character when he's competing under pressure, and to see how he is. It's very interesting..."

Ocon's understanding of the level he needs to get to for next year comes against the backdrop of some pretty good progress in recent weeks. Having returned to F1 this season after a year on the sidelines as Mercedes reserve, Ocon is open in admitting that it took some time for him to get fully up to speed and get as integrated as he needed to be within Enstone.

While team-mate Ricciardo found early momentum after the breakthrough of that much talked about set-up tweak at Silverstone, which provided the Australian the 'sweetspot' of car handling he had been chasing, Ocon endured some more difficulties as he played catch up. There was not anything majorly wrong - it was just that he needed time to understand how the Renault team worked, how he needed to communicate with engineers, and how they could get the best out of each other.

"We've never maximised the whole potential of the weekend, overall. When we have maximised it, it was 90%. And I think there's this 10% left that we still need to get" Esteban Ocon

"After being out for a year, arriving into a new team, it took a little bit more time I would say to settle in here," he explains. "It was just working and understanding each other, both myself and the team, in how to work closely and what to get out from the car. It took a little bit more time.

"I think the last couple of races are a lot more where I want to be. If we put everything together, I think there has been some good moments, but they have not been complete, I would say. We've never maximised the whole potential of the weekend, overall. When we have maximised it, it was 90%. And I think there's this 10% left that we still need to get. There are still a few details that we need to sort out but, it's coming."

Ocon's situation also wasn't helped by the brutal intensity of the 2020 F1 season, where there was barely any time for teams and drivers to take stock and review each weekend. With the first nine races taking place in 11 weekends, there wasn't much time to analyse and plot where improvements needed to be made.

"It's not a normal season at all," reflects Ocon. "It's not a season where you do a race, and then you have time to analyse and look at the details, or go back and work in the simulator and try to focus for the next race again. It's not like that all this year.

"We have to go races by races and try to get all those details fixed, but in such a short period of time. It is tough. With Daniel, early in the year, I had to go through a learning process with the team on understanding.

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"It's how you work personally with the team, and how they understand you and how they then translate that into turning it into the car. And that's been a lot better on my side recently. I'm pretty pleased with that. But yeah, it has taken a bit more time than expected."

Things are indeed settling down now, though, and recent qualifying efforts have been encouraging as there has been very little separating Ocon and Ricciardo on the timesheets on a Saturday afternoon. But it's not just the results (including finishing ahead of Ricciardo in Portugal last weekend) where gains are being made - for there are other signs of genuine progress.

"I'm not sure Portugal was my best weekend, but I would say it's been the best collaboration that we had," he said after finishing eighth, just ahead of Ricciardo. "Let me just give you a simple example. At times in the race, I was thinking about having some information, and then 10 seconds later I was getting the information without asking for it.

"So that's got to a point where we are seeing a lot of improvements, and we are working a lot better. I feel like the build-up has been stronger as well. In terms of an overall weekend, even if our performance was not as good as we were hoping, I definitely think it's been stronger."

Ocon's calmness in dealing with matters, allied to a willingness to listen and learn, have helped him up to this point. There have been moments where he has perhaps shown impatience, like with his spin in qualifying at the Tuscan Grand Prix, but he has never fallen into the trap of being desperate to shine.

"When you're not where you want to be in terms of performance, it's not an easy thing, but I always try to find solutions," he says. "I always try to bring the people with me and then for them to tell me what I should improve. Or on my side, trying to give them advice on what we should do better. And there's no thinking of me, just trying to impress or anything.

"What I want to do is to extract the best from the car and I don't feel like we've done that the whole year. I think we've got closer to it recently, but still not 100%. Maybe in some sessions we did, but not on the overall weekend."

After further encouragement in Portugal, there are still five more opportunities for that to happen this year. And then, of course, comes that great challenge of being team-mate to Alonso next season.

But there could be a fascinating dynamic at play in 2021 when Ocon is the one with the team experience and the understanding of how things work at Renault and it's his more experienced team-mate who has to play catch up...

"I hope, of course," he smiles. "From what I felt from 2017 to 2018 on my side, with Force India, I felt the second year was a lot easier, and everything was a lot smoother. We knew what to expect and what to do with the car and that was a lot better.

"But with Fernando, he has 20 years of experience, so I don't know if he will be catching up or his experience will show up straight away and he will be on it.

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"But definitely I am looking at me, for personal improvement. And definitely I think next year I will be better for just understanding from the work, from knowing the team, exactly what we need. The target is to improve the details that we didn't manage to do this year early in the season."

It's returning to that talk of hard work again. There is no alternative: even if it has meant a bit of binge watching.