Ocon must learn respect or he'll waste his career

Who says Formula 1 is boring? The Brazilian Grand Prix was one of the best since the hybrid engine era started in 2014. The Red Bulls really made the show, and but for Esteban Ocon forgetting to put his brain in gear Max Verstappen would have won.

And I really do mean won. Not gifted the victory, but earned after a great drive from fifth on the grid, overtaking Sebastian Vettel, Kimi Raikkonen, Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton on track.

With Verstappen's team-mate Daniel Ricciardo coming from 11th to fourth, nipping at Raikkonen's heels for the podium in the last 10 laps, it proves there are conditions in which F1 cars can overtake.

The Verstappen/Ocon incident will be debated until the cows come home. But Verstappen was a lap ahead and Ocon was attempting to unlap himself. Verstappen was on the inside, with Ocon trying to go around the outside.

They touched wheels through Turn 2 and Verstappen spun away the lead. Yes, he should have left more room for Ocon, but remember he was a lap ahead.

Ocon was the one who could easily see everything that was going on and he was effectively in the same situation as a driver being lapped.

The Red Bull is seconds per lap faster than a Force India and the new-tyre advantage would soon fade, so what was he going to gain? The stewards were absolutely right to give a 10-second stop/go penalty.

Remember how many incidents Ocon and team-mate Sergio Perez have had. This is something Ocon needs to think about if he's going to make the most of a chance at Mercedes in the future - if he gets it.

Force India says it told Ocon he could unlap himself. I was on the pitwall for the famous 1993 Japanese Grand Prix, when Eddie Irvine in the Jordan unlapped himself from Ayrton Senna in his first grand prix. Senna didn't like it and paid a visit to our team office after the race and smacked Irvine.

If I was looking for an up and coming driver, Ocon would not be top of my list purely because of his lack of respect

It's good to see things haven't changed that much! After the race Verstappen seemed to be close to doing the same to Ocon, although he settled for a few shoves.

I don't mind drivers getting pushy, but they must respect their rivals - especially their team-mates. If Ocon has one downfall, it's his lack of respect for Perez. I'm pretty sure they are as bad as each other, but Ocon has to learn from this as he's on the way up.

If I was looking for an up and coming driver, Ocon would not be top of my list purely because of this. This is something that's important for Ocon to recognise because what this race highlighted is that there's a new generation of drivers rising to the top.

Verstappen is already there with Red Bull, and Charles Leclerc put in another excellent drive to seventh for Sauber in his penultimate race for the team before moving up to Ferrari. We've also got George Russell and Lando Norris on the grid next year, and if they get the tools from Williams and McLaren respectively they will show their talent.

Ocon can be part of that rising group, and he's good enough to be. But he could very well be without a drive next year, and if he wants Mercedes to run him there must be no doubts about his ability to keep his head on track and respect his team-mate.

The standard of this new group is high, and Leclerc is hopefully going to bring a new lease of life to Ferrari. He and Sauber worked together during changeable conditions in Q2 in Brazil and his understanding of the situation was key to staying out when the track conditions looked like they would make improving lap times impossible.

This is very satisfying for me because it shows that collectively Leclerc and Sauber are capable of thinking outside of the box when the conditions create a chance. This is what we used to do at Jordan and Stewart, and on some occasions it really paid off.

Ferrari now is the opposite. Why go out in Q2 on supersoft tyres and then come in at the end of the out-lap and change to softs? Didn't it put together a plan before the session started? From what I saw, it looks like decisions are being made on the fly, and in reality that's probably what has cost Ferrari the championship for the past two years.

It almost paid the price for that error of judgement when Vettel was stopped at the weighing scales and in his haste didn't follow the correct FIA procedures. He got away with it, but could just as easily have been thrown out of the event.

During Q1 and Q2 the FIA can stop any car it wishes to and check the weight. It doesn't weigh the cars during Q3 because it's a shorter session. This is to give the drivers time for two qualifying runs in each segment - those are the rules and Ferrari knows this, so why take the risk?

But I do agree with Ricciardo that the FIA shouldn't call the cars onto the weighbridge during qualifying until that driver has at least set a lap time. It's a simple change to implement and can be done immediately.

After a difficult season, Vettel also needed to keep his head. Up against Leclerc next year, he needs to be at his best to show he's still the driver Ferrari needs.

Speaking of the future, there was talk about the tyres yet again, with the drivers meeting with Pirelli to express their concerns after the Mexican Grand Prix.

With plans already in place for 2019, and the tyre tender open for '20, it's important to highlight how massive a task it's going to be for whoever F1's sole tyre supplier will be for this impending era in which drivers such as Verstappen, Leclerc and maybe Ocon will be taking on established stars like Hamilton.

We need to remember that F1 has had a one-make tyre supplier in Pirelli since 2011 - and before that Bridgestone from '07. Between the cars at the front and the back, there is probably something like a 20% difference in how they work the tyre. And that 20% is in everything. It's in downforce, balance, mechanical stiffness, roll stiffness and traction, not to mention driver response to car and tyre feedback. So it's a tough task for any one supplier to make a tyre that suits everyone.

Most tyre manufacturers would like to focus on developing around one team and driver; that's what it was like when we had Michelin and Bridgestone slogging it out with each other, but focused on their championship contenders. The rest of the teams, like us at Jordan, got what we got.

Pirelli issues maximum camber, maximum temperatures and minimum pressures that you are allowed to use during an event. The camber restrictions are fine and you can design the suspension geometry around those restrictions, but the temperatures and pressures are the areas that can really affect the grip level and the tyres' degradation.

In Brazil the limits were blanket warm-up temperatures of 100C for a maximum of two hours. If you do this, you will be maturing the tyre compound and the tyre will not have quite as much grip when you first run it in qualifying.

You need to get them as hot as possible to help to comply with the minimum tyre pressures, which in Brazil were 23psi front and 21psi rear. On the track the tyres will run at about 100C, so these pressures are roughly what you are stuck with, and they are in general quite high.

In the past with Bridgestone, there was no real central control over these parameters and a team could do whatever it considered best. For the front, we used more or less standard tyre blankets that heated the tyre through the tread and sidewall. They would be set at around 80C.

For the rear, it was a bit more complicated. The tyre blankets heated the tyres through the tread surface and separately through the tyre sidewall and rim. The sidewall would be set at around 100C and the tread at 60C, which meant the tyre was coming up to temperature but we weren't overheating the tread.

We would also aim to time it correctly so the tyres just reached their temperatures when they were required to be fitted to the cars. That way we weren't maturing them and you could get maximum grip from them over that one lap of qualifying.

In those days, tyre pressures were once again down to the teams. The norm would be around 19-21psi front and 17-19psi rear. Lower gave more grip, so ideal for Monaco and Hungary-style circuits. Higher gave more stability, so better for Spa and Suzuka. Half a psi can have a significant impact, especially on traction. It was never quite as simple as that, but was simpler than it is now.

Currently, when the driver leaves the pits on his qualifying warm-up lap they will go as slowly as they can and minimise any wheelspin. This is to try to reduce the rear tyre pressures while keeping the front tyres hot by using the front brakes a lot.

If they didn't do this when they start the qualifying lap, the car would not have enough front tyre grip so would understeer and by the end of the lap the rears would be at too high a pressure, which would give lots of wheelspin and, in turn, overheat the tyres.

It's the same for the race, and that's why you quite often see the cars sitting on the grid with front brakes smoking. The biggest difference is that it's not only one lap that the rears have to survive for, it's your stint length, so looking after the rears lap after lap is really what the drivers call tyre management.

Watching some of the cars, but especially the Mercedes, coming out of the last corner in Brazil you could actually see the rear tyre grip oscillation. This gets set up by driving over the kerbs, but depending on the differential set-up it also transfers across the axle to the other tyre.

Some tyres are just that bit more resilient to the adverse conditions thrown at them by the various teams and drivers

It's a bit like what used to be called 'axle tramp', where the tyre would grip, then slip, then grip. With that oscillation, the tyre is deforming and recovering at a fairly high frequency and that's one of the reasons Pirelli wants the higher-than-ideal tyre pressures.

Pirelli has run on three occasions this year with a reduced rear tyre tread thickness, which helps reduce the mass of the tyre. This means that it reduces the tyre temperature slightly, which in turn will reduce blistering.

This also improves the stability of the car as it reduces the tread movement. So from a driver's point of view it allows them to push that little bit harder before they suffer from thermal degradation. But when the tyre wears to a certain point it will lose the temperature faster, leading very quickly to a large performance drop-off.

This, along with various other construction changes for 2019, should lead to tyres that the driver can be more aggressive with. But that doesn't mean they will not have to 'look after the tyres'.

Drivers have always had to do this, it's just the degree of nursing the tyres that seems to have increased as the compounds have got softer over the past couple of seasons.

When I worked for Stewart, we used Bridgestones, but when Ford/Jaguar took over the team for 2000, Michelin got involved. To get up to speed with the new tyre supplier, we set up a test team to help Michelin evaluate its tyres.

At our first meeting the Michelin personnel wanted to show us their understanding of rubber. Michelin had made some solid rubber balls about the size of a golf ball and they told us to bounce these on the floor.

One would bounce just about as high as where you dropped it from and another would just stop dead on the floor. The difference was amazing, and tyre compounds and the rubber used are no different.

They might be, as the saying goes, 'just black and round', but there are some that are just that bit more resilient to the adverse conditions thrown at them by the various teams and drivers.

With such a great crop of drivers set to battle at the front in Formula 1 in the coming seasons, hopefully we will have more races like the Brazilian Grand Prix. The tyres, whether you like it or not, will play a big part in that - but as we've seen, it's a huge challenge for the tyre supplier.