Tyre supplier Pirelli doesn’t deserve blame for Formula 1’s often processional racing this year, says Esteban Ocon.

Yesterday’s Las Vegas Grand Prix was one of many this year in which teams have converged on largely similar strategies and drivers have found it difficult to overtake as a result. However Ocon said F1 tyres don’t degrade rapidly because drivers asked Pirelli to produce more durable rubber.

“I think we were all expecting or hoping that there was going to be quite a lot of degradation on that front tyre,” said Ocon after yesterday’s race. “There wasn’t any.

“We can’t complain, we’ve been asking Pirelli for years to have these kind of tyres. I was hoping that at the front people would struggle like in 2023, but that hasn’t happened.

“We were flat-out every lap and just nothing [happened]. So I’m a bit disappointed on that side, but that’s how it is.”

F1 is considering a change to its rules which would force drivers to make at least two tyre changes per race, but nothing has been agreed yet for next season. Drivers will be required to change tyres twice at this weekend’s Qatar Grand Prix after Pirelli revealed concerns over potential tyre failures.

Ocon said overtaking was difficult in yesterday’s race. He lost one place to Lewis Hamilton and tried to recover it later in the race but was unable to get close enough to the Ferrari.

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“I think we executed the race well but there wasn’t quite enough pace for us to get into the points,” he told the official F1 channel. “I was fighting with Lewis the whole race, really.”

“I thought what if I tried more to keep him behind in the first stint? Maybe, but he was much quicker in the first stint and then I was much quicker on the second one.

“But it wasn’t quite enough for me to get close. Probably five more laps would have been needed to be able to fight and the last two laps I stayed at 1.3 seconds, basically, and couldn’t really get much closer.”

Ocon originally finished 11th but was promoted into the points when the McLaren drivers were disqualified.

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