Esteban Ocon has signed a multi-year contract with the American team, Haas, and will be racing for them in Formula One starting in 2025.
In addition to British rookie Oliver Bearman, who will graduate from Formula Two, Ocon, 27, will complete Haas’ lineup for the upcoming season, the company said on Thursday ahead of this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix.
The Frenchman, who will be racing for Haas for the first time, will be rejoining Ayao Komatsu, the team principal, who was his engineer for his first Formula One test with Lotus back in 2014.
In a statement, Ocon noted that he and Haas had delighted in “honest and fruitful discussions these last few months” about the future, and that he would be “joining a very ambitious racing team, whose spirit, work ethic, and undeniable upward trajectory has really impressed me.”
With Ocon and Bearman taking the places of Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen, who had already been revealed to be departing the team, Haas will field an entirely new F1 lineup for 2025.
“The experience he brings, not just from his own talent base but also from working for a manufacturer team, will be advantageous to us in our growth as an organization,” Komatsu said of Ocon.
“It was vital we had a driver with experience in beside Oliver Bearman next year, but Esteban’s only 27 — he’s still young with a lot to prove as well. I think we have a hungry, dynamic driver pairing.”
What led Ocon to Haas?
Ever since Ocon declared in June that he would be leaving Alpine at the end of the season when his contract expired, Haas has appeared to be the most likely place for him to go.
After his unexpected victory for Alpine at the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix, Ocon was always going to be a part of what is turning out to be a very fluid F1 driver market for 2025, delivering race-winning experience to any interested teams.
Many teams had discussed a possible drive for the next season; Williams had already expressed interest in him as a substitute for Carlos Sainz, the team’s priority objective.
However, it was evident in recent weeks that a deal with Haas was almost complete, especially after the team made Magnussen’s transfer from Hungary official.
Ocon said last week it was “very clear what our intentions are for the future,” with the hope of getting a deal announced before the summer break, which starts next week.
He will be joining a Haas team that is presently seeing improvement under Komatsu’s leadership. It has already scored more than twice as many points as it did over the whole of last year, and it currently sits seventh in the constructors rankings.
A fresh start for Ocon
Ocon, whose last season with Alpine turned out to be a disappointing one, will start again with this move.
Even before the news of Ocon’s departure, there was always a sense that a chapter was closing due to the team’s poor performance and the hostility that erupted between him and colleague Pierre Gasly following their crash on the first lap in Monaco.
With this move, Ocon’s association with the Enstone-based team—formerly known as Renault and Lotus—that dates back more than a decade will come to an end. At the age of 14, he enrolled in their junior academy, but Mercedes took him under its wing due to their financial difficulties.
Ocon was given a helping hand by Mercedes to enter the Formula One race in 2016. His performances and reliability as a Force India driver won him recognition early on, and in 2020 he was even given a chance to drive alongside Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes F1 car.
However, he was never really considered by Mercedes this time around as they search for Hamilton’s replacement. Instead, their 17-year-old F2 racer protégé Andrea Kimi Antonelli is expected to take Hamilton’s seat.
Ocon will have long-term stability with Haas and, for the first time in his career, the opportunity to lead a team as the more seasoned player alongside Bearman, a much younger teammate.
(Andrea Diodato/NurPhoto via Getty Images
