Esteban Ocon’s career as a Formula 1 race driver is over – at least for the foreseeable future – after a falling-out with Haas led to the Frenchman being dropped for the rest of this season.
Ocon, 30, was already going to be leaving Haas at the end of the year, with little prospect of finding a seat on the grid next season.
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But the acrimonious turn of events in Mexico City last weekend brought that forward by a few races.
Ocon now faces a year on the sidelines, with the aim of finding a berth as a reserve driver, as he seeks to rebuild his career.
This is not the first time he has found himself in this situation.
Ocon was also without a seat in 2019 when he lost his drive at what had been called the Force India team after it was bought by Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, who put his son Lance in Ocon’s car.
This, though, feels like it has more potential finality about it. Not least because 10 years into his career in F1, Ocon is well known within the sport, both his competitive level and his approach.
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He’s been around the block a few times. His career has not been especially stellar. He has a reputation for falling out with teams and team-mates. And there is a new generation breaking through in F1, led by new world champion Kimi Antonelli.
Rows with his team
The catalyst for Ocon’s departure from Haas was a falling-out with team principal Ayao Komatsu after Friday practice in Mexico City last weekend.
Exactly what led to him being dropped is unknown. No-one is talking, not even off the record, and lawyers are now involved.
What is known is that Ocon objected over the team radio while in the car to being told by his engineer Laura Mueller that they were switching his run plan from using soft tyres for his race-simulation run to mediums.
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Ocon said to Mueller: “No, no. I wanted the soft. Don’t do that to me. Come on.”
It seems the argument carried on after the session with Komatsu. The announcement that he was dropped for the weekend came on Saturday morning.
Later that day, Ocon put out a statement on social media admitting “a difference in viewpoints led to a discussion with the parties involved” but adding that he “categorically rejected any reports or allegations suggesting that any form of physical violence was used to resolve any differences of any nature”.
That followed a report in France’s L’Equipe newspaper saying a meeting between Komatsu and Ocon “ended abruptly, perhaps even physically”.
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Haas said nothing more over the weekend in Mexico but on Tuesday evening put out what was already being seen as the inevitable announcement that he would not drive for the team again.
Ocon secured a rare podium finish in Brazil in 2024 for Alpine [Getty Images]
Complaints and clashes with team-mates
Haas had already run out of patience with Ocon long before Mexico City but whatever happened there was serious enough that Komatsu felt the relationship had to end on the spot.
The decline of Ocon’s time with Haas has echoes of previous experiences.
Ocon has been beaten by team-mate Oliver Bearman over his two seasons at Haas, just as he was outpaced by Pierre Gasly and before him Fernando Alonso at Alpine, and Daniel Ricciardo before that when the team was known as Renault.
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When Haas signed Ocon, his reputation was such that many were surprised they had taken him. Komatsu felt he could make it work.
But the team began to notice a pattern. When Ocon was struggling, he would become defensive and blame the team and car. Tensions would rise and the team felt there was a lack of accountability from the driver.
There were also clashes with his team-mate, for example in Monaco practice when they got in each other’s way and Bearman ended up calling Ocon “an idiot” over the radio.
They also crashed into each other towards the end of the British Grand Prix last year.
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Competitive tensions between team-mates are common in F1. A driver’s team-mate is also their biggest rival – the only person with the same equipment so the only driver against which they can be directly measured.
The parallel need to work together to benefit the team’s overall prospects can be an uncomfortable ask in such circumstances.
It’s a problem that is causing tension at Ferrari between Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, for example, as was also seen in Mexico.
But over the years, Ocon has built an unenviable reputation for both these sides of his character. To outsiders, this can be surprising because he is charm personified with the media, a delight to deal with.
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He and Gasly – who were childhood friends before falling out nearly 20 years ago – crashed twice together at Alpine. At the end of their two seasons together, was the first occasion on which Ocon was released before the end of the season, dropped with one race to go.
Alonso and Ocon also fell out and the Spanish icon did not trouble to hide his distaste for his team-mate’s behaviour at times. Ocon also had on-track clashes and team radio disputes with Sergio Perez when at Force India.
Alpine also saw the same pattern as did Haas more recently in terms of self-awareness and accountability.
Alonso put in a starring performance in wet qualifying in Canada in 2022 and stuck his midfield Alpine on the front row alongside Max Verstappen’s Red Bull.
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That lap was 1.6 seconds faster than Ocon’s and team insiders say he simply could not accept that he had been that much slower.
Ocon is said to have insisted there must have been something wrong with his car and continued to do so for several races. The team checked and checked and there was nothing wrong. It was just Alonso doing what great drivers sometimes do and redefining perceptions of what was possible.
All drivers complain. It’s part of their make-up. Their motivation comes from believing they can be the best and finding weaknesses in the car and improving them is their job and how they make themselves and the team more competitive.
The better they are, the more acceptable that complaining is. Verstappen, for example, is constantly having a go about clunky gearshifts or a balance he does not like. Red Bull accept it because he delivers on track at such a high level on such a consistent basis.
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Ocon’s issue is that there is a different pattern. On average, he has been slower than Bearman these last two years, just as he was against Gasly from 2023-24, against Alonso from ’21-22 and against Ricciardo in 2020.
Finding a way back on to the grid won’t be easy
Ocon is managed by Mercedes and came through their young driver programme.
When he lost his Force India seat, it was Mercedes that took him on as reserve driver in 2019.
At one point, team principal Toto Wolff was considering putting Ocon in the race team alongside Hamilton. One of the reasons he did not was he thought their characters would clash, that the relationship would be too combustible. Valtteri Bottas was retained for 2020 after all.
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At the same time, George Russell, the next Mercedes protege, was excelling for Williams and Mercedes concluded from the data they had on both that Russell was their guy for the future, not Ocon.
That was effectively the end of Ocon’s career as a potential candidate for a top team but Mercedes helped him back on to the grid with a drive at Renault in 2020, before the team was rebranded Alpine in 2021.
It was for them that Ocon took his sole victory, at the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix. He drove well but the win owed a substantial amount to fortune.
The start was wet and there was a multi-car pile-up that took out Bottas and both Red Bulls.
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Ocon came out of that pile-up running second to Hamilton. The race was red-flagged. By the time it was restarted, the track was drying.
At the end of the formation lap, every single car pitted for dry-weather slick tyres bar Hamilton, who took to the grid on his own.
He had to stop on the next lap, falling to the back. That put Ocon into the lead from Sebastian Vettel’s Aston Martin, a car of similar performance on a track where overtaking is difficult. Ocon and Alpine managed the race well to stay in front of the four-time champion throughout.
Hamilton spent the rest of the race fighting back and his pace was so superior it appeared he might win.
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Until he caught Alonso, that is. The Spaniard, who had been delayed by rather than benefitting from the first-lap crash, was running fourth, close behind Ocon, Vettel and Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari.
Alonso knew what was at stake, that if Hamilton passed him quickly, the Briton would almost certainly win the race. And he knew what a win would mean for Alpine.
The team’s last victory had been in 2013 but that was when they were known as Lotus and were under different owners. Renault’s most recent win had been secured by Alonso – at the 2008 Japanese Grand Prix.
Alonso won his two world titles for Renault. He had been brought back to F1 after a two-year break by Renault. And so he fought as hard as he knew to keep Hamilton at bay for as long as possible.
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The Mercedes was so much faster that at times it looked as if Hamilton might drive through or over Alonso. Instead, using all his skill and guile, he held Hamilton back for 10 laps.
When Hamilton finally passed Alonso, there were only five laps to go. Within two, he was past Sainz but he did not have time to make any further progress before the chequered flag.
Ocon and Alonso celebrated together with the team after the win.
Yet little more than a year later, relations had deteriorated to the point that, after a clash between the pair at the Brazilian Grand Prix at the end of 2022, shortly before Alonso was leaving the team to move to Aston Martin, the two-time champion sarcastically referred to Ocon as “our friend” over the radio.
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Out of the car, asked whether he would speak to Ocon about the incident, he said: “I don’t need to. One more race. Then it’s over, finally.”
For Ocon, it’s now over at Haas, too. Finding a way back on to the grid won’t be easy.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
