Esteban Ocon partly attributed his Q1 exit at the German Grand Prix to a lack of practice time, admitting he felt “a bit blind” heading into qualifying.
Ocon sat out the opening session at Hockenheim on Friday morning as Force India elected to hand track time to tester Nicholas Latifi.
Ocon returned for the second session but Saturday morning’s heavy rain left the final session as a near-washout, and the Frenchman felt the conditions hurt him compared to his rivals.
It marked Ocon’s first failure to reach Q2 since last year’s Monaco Grand Prix.
“It’s not a great feeling going out in Q1 but I made a slight error in qualifying today, which cost me the opportunity to continue into Q2,” he said.
“I didn’t manage to get the right feeling with the car and we couldn’t set it up how I wanted.
“Today’s rain during FP3 really hurt me because I had already missed a session yesterday. There is nothing we could have done about it, but it meant we went into qualifying feeling a bit blind, with just one session of track time.
“The battle in the midfield is going to be close, as always, but this is a good track for overtaking and I think we can push our way into the points.”
Team-mate Sergio Perez, conversely, made it through to Q3, and will start from 10th place.
“I think the team did a strong job especially considering we lost FP3 to the rain,” he said.
“It wasn’t an easy session and I only just made it through to Q2. I had to make every lap count in every session. P10 is a good place to start the race.”
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