Ocon leaves Alpine fastest in F1 testing

The final chequered flag of the 2023 F1 season has fallen with Esteban Ocon fastest at the conclusion of post-season testing in Abu Dhabi.

After eight hours of running, the Alpine driver proved the benchmark with a best time of 1:24.393s.

However, more important than the time was the quantity of laps, with almost 2200 laps set by the day’s 25 runners.

Five drivers climbed in for the afternoon, including Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin), Yuki Tsunoda (Scuderia AlphaTauri), Charles Leclerc (Ferrari), Alex Albon (Williams), and Zak O’Sullivan (Williams).

Following two red flags this morning, the afternoon’s running was interrupted only once when Ayumu Iwasa’s Scuderia AlphaTauri caught fire.

The afternoon component of the day’s action was largely event-free, a spin from Jake Dennis with three hours left in the day to sum of the mishaps for much of the afternoon.

He looped the Red Bull at Turn 12 to briefly draw the yellow flags but otherwise carried on to log the 14th fastest time and bank 124 laps.

Eventually, O’Sullivan too had a spin, his at Turn 1 with 75 minutes remaining but was able to gather the car and carry on without further issue.

Jack Doohan, George Russell, Zhou Guanyu were among those to make use of the additional lane to complete practice starts.

With 36 minutes remaining, the third red flag of the day was shown when Ayumu Iwasa stopped on track at Turn 16 – the final corner.

The Japanese driver had smoke billowing from his car, prompting a 17-minute stoppage and leaving little more than 20 minutes of running once it restarted.

Esteban Ocon wasted none of it to go fastest with a 1:24.393s, Pato O’Ward second best on a 1:24.662s.

Both logged over 100 laps before sitting out the day’s final minutes.

Russell never returned following his crash in the morning when a car issue saw him tag the barrier at Turn 6 to draw the red flags.

On top of banking laps, teams also sent their drivers out to perform practice starts, using the Formula 2 pit lane for the purpose.

With testing complete, teams will now head back to base and continue preparing for the 2024 season.

Testing is set to begin in Bahrain on February 21.