Ocon’s Long Road to Haas: New Future Begins Now
Jul.26 - Esteban Ocon has confirmed that he decided to leave Alpine "a long time ago".
On Thursday at Spa, after a long period of rumours linking the departing Alpine driver with Haas, the new multi-year contract for the Frenchman was finally revealed.
"The decision was made for me a long time ago," the 27-year-old admitted to reporters. "Five years with the same team is a long time in Formula 1.
Ocon indicated that both he and Alpine are happy to part ways.
"We achieved good things and we experienced things were a bit more difficult from time to time," he said diplomatically.
"This season has certainly been frustrating. That's no secret. It's not new either," Ocon explained.
"We have not done a good job with technical development. As a result, the current car has the same problems as three years ago. This is unacceptable in Formula 1," he added.
Indeed, Alpine and Renault are currently weighing up scrapping the works engine program altogether and switching to Mercedes customer power - as soon as 2025.
It's even rumoured that the Belgian GP will be Bruno Famin's last as team principal, with Hitech founder Oliver Oakes linked with the ongoing role.
Ocon sounds very happy to be moving on.
"The talks (with Haas) started quite a long time ago, already halfway through the 2023 season," he said.
Ocon worked with team boss Ayao Komatsu a decade ago at Lotus when the Japanese was a race engineer, and said he has already been made to feel "loved and wanted".
"When we sat down for the first time, he told me about his plans for the future, which are very clear," he said. "So the aim is clear, but still modest and realistic, which I like.
"The way to improve has already been laid, and as we can see, the process has already begun."
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The mutual decision to part ways with Alpine indeed was made a while before the formal announcement.
The first Haas talks happening as far in advance as roughly halfway through last season is something I didn't envision at all.
The all-but-confirmed Mercedes PU switch won't happen for next season in any case, given how far into the design phase A525 is with solely Renault PU's integration needs in consideration.
Famin will step down from the TP role by next month's end.
The history with Komatsu is about Ocon's first F1 test in 2014 with Team Enstone (where Komatsu worked from 2006 until 2015) with Komatsu being the engineer for that test while being the race engineer for Grosjean.
More about the production capacity at Brixworth than whether it would fit, remember 2009 a few washers and a bit of carbon fibre trimming and bingo, yes now weve hybrids, but if needed , it would fit, but my guess would be ramping up engine capacity so quick issue and French unions and probable redundancies, meaning itll be 26, Oh yeah Imo
R.i.P Renault engines