Jacques Villeneuve-“Ocon is an Embarrassment”

Jacques Villeneuve, the Canadian driver, has given his verdict on the Ocon-Verstappen incident that transpired earlier at the Brazilian GP. Jacques Villeneuve has never been the kind of personality to hide behind words and has always spoken his heart, and today it was no different. He berated Esteban Ocon, and said that the worst part of the entire incident was that there was no sincere apology from Esteban Ocon.

“Ocon is an embarrassment”, he said. “That was ridiculous. And the worst bit is everyone has seen what happened, and on the radio not even a ‘sorry guys, I was wrong.’ It’s good to accept you’re wrong.”

“You can unlap yourself, but do it properly”, he continued. “You’re not allowed to put the leader at risk at all. You don’t do something that loses time for the other driver, and is taking a risk. Overtaking on the straight and you’re in front is fine. But that looked like it was a battle for the lead”, he said.

Villeneuve also pointed out taht this was not the first time that Ocon has been involved in accidents. Ocon has indeed been involved in a rather high number of incidents, primarily with his teammate. He’s not always been completely to blame, however in Azerbaijan this year he did have a clumsy accident with Kimi Raikkonen which was indeed his fault, and which probably cost Kimi a podium.

“But also it shows he has no race-craft, zero race-craft whatsoever”, said Jacques Villeneuve. “All the incidents in the last two years where maybe it’s his fault, maybe it’s not, you can kind of think that maybe he was in the wrong, because he hasn’t read the race properly. And he never learns, because it’s never his fault, ever”, he said.

On the other hand Villeneuve praised Verstappen for not over-reacting, and not punching Ocon in the face! “I thought he (Verstappen) was very restrained in his reaction. He didn’t even punch him! What do we want to see? We want to emotion, we want to see these gladiators. It was good to see that. And the other one is taller than him anyway!”

“Max was amazing, and his overtaking early on without DRS, aggressive, clean. It’s a different Max”, he said on a serious note. “It looks like after Monaco he took (Daniel) Ricciardo’s talent, or what was good in Ricciardo as well”, he continued. “You already had the Max, and he got rid of what was nasty and took what was good from Ricciardo, and has really made a step. In the last few races he’s been very impressive.”