F1 race winner cautions Alpine against celebrating a points finish in Miami 

Alpine driver and F1 race winner Esteban Ocon has warned the team against celebrating a point finish in Miami. The team scored its first point of the season in the last race following a challenging start to the year. Despite a significant overhaul in their approach compared to last year, the team fell short of its initial goals.

Consequently, at the start of the season, the car was nearly 10kg overweight, posing a significant disadvantage. To add to this, it was aerodynamically not developed enough. The first race of the season saw both Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly qualifying on the last row of the grid.

Since then, Alpine has slowly made progress. The team brought a small upgrade in China and has continued to shed a lot of weight from the car. In Miami, it was the first time that the car was within the weight limit and it helped both Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly to reach Q2.

In the race, Ocon went on to finish P10, helping Alpine score its first point of the season. The Frenchman, however, cautioned the team to not celebrate too much, as the team was not where it wanted to be. As quoted by Motorsport.com, he said,

"We don't want to be jumping around and celebrating too hard. Obviously, it's only a top 10. But considering where we were a couple of races ago in Bahrain, 19th and 20th, we can take the positive out of this race."

He added,

"The baby steps that we are doing at the moment and that obviously feels good because the team kept motivated trying to understand what is going on with our pace, and it hasn't been the smoothest weekend. But it's two races that we've come close to the points: 11th in Shanghai, 10th today - we are inside the points, and definitely feels good to come out of this weekend with some reward."

Alpine still not as fast in races as it is in qualifying, believes Esteban Ocon

Looking back at the race, Esteban Ocon felt that the Alpine was still not as fast in the long runs as it was in qualifying. The driver was a bit lucky with the virtual safety car timing and made the most of it. He was, however, being chased down by Nico Hulkenberg late in the race, and if there had been a few more laps, the German would have jumped Ocon.

Talking about the strengths and weaknesses of Alpine, Ocon said,

"We are still better in qualifying than we are in the race. Today if you leave 10 more laps probably Nico would have been very close and fighting with us again. I had to fight my way through in that race."

He added,

"It was insane how many moves I had to do and the fact that we're struggling with the straightline speed as well didn't help too much. So not the perfect lead up to the race from Saturday onwards, but nevertheless, we come up with some reward."

The first point for Alpine is certainly going to be a relief for the team. The next step, however, has to be to sustain this momentum and make this a regular thing.