Esteban Ocon will join Ollie Bearman in an all-new Haas Formula 1 driver line-up in 2025 after signing a multi-year deal with the team.
Ocon reunites with the person who engineered him in his first ever F1 test with Lotus back in 2014 – Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu.
That connection could be crucial in getting the best out of Ocon, a one-time race winner who looked like the Renault works team’s favoured son until Pierre Gasly’s arrival in 2023.
Ocon recovered from a year on the sidelines in 2019, and a bruising first season back on the grid alongside Daniel Ricciardo, to compare well against Fernando Alonso in their two years together as Alpine team-mates.
He has been ousted due to that team’s preference for Gasly, who has perhaps bested Ocon by a small margin in the totality of their time together so far, and a history of occasional team-mate clashes.
That can easily get overplayed where Ocon is concerned. While it has arisen as an issue with several team-mates, and flared up in a big way at times, it would be unfair to say it is his dominant trait.
He is a very good midfield driver – potentially deserving of a better chance – who has proven himself capable of scoring big results when the opportunity arises.
Komatsu wants that at Haas and is willing to risk any potential tension that could arise from pairing a highly rated young rookie against a strong-willed driver still keen to prove himself - "I think we have a hungry, dynamic driver pairing [for 2025]".
The benefits are significant and the upside is worth the risk.
And for Haas, signing Ocon can be a totem of its Komatsu-led revival. Losing Nico Hulkenberg after this season will be keenly felt but nobody holds it against the smallest team on the grid that Hulkenberg is abandoning ship to sign for the Audi works team.
That news didn't reflect poorly on Haas at all – beyond the fact that Komatsu didn’t really have a chance to even try to keep Hulkenberg because team owner Gene Haas doesn’t like being forced into early discussions.
Signing Ocon, though, achieves three obvious things.
First, it shows Komatsu has been able to get Haas to green-light a driver signing before the summer break. That means he is being backed, and that the team can make moves on a more beneficial timeline.
Second, it softens the blow of losing Hulkenberg, as it’s getting an experienced, race-winning driver who knows how works teams operate (across his Renault stint but also his time on the books at Mercedes).
Third, it’s a big vote of confidence in the Haas project for Ocon to have committed now while other seats are still in play.
Cynically, one might say that the Audi and Williams seats were never going to fall his way because senior figures there were known to be concerned by how he would fit in (in Williams’s case that also included a literal element as it even did a seat fit to assess Ocon’s above-average height and proportions in its cockpit!).
But the fact remains that Ocon had been in contention at both and the wild nature of the driver market meant that those teams could easily lose out on first or second options, if Ocon was so far down the list for either. He’s removed himself from the table – something he would not have done for Haas a year ago.
This team is worth something now in F1’s midfield whereas 12 months back it would have been an absolute last resort for a driver of Ocon’s quality, who would have held out as long as possible in the hope of something else.
Moving before Carlos Sainz makes his mind up on Alpine or Williams (or somehow sneaks in at Mercedes, which looks very unlikely), or Valtteri Bottas dives in first wherever Sainz doesn't, shows that a premium was placed on getting things done. But that wouldn't happen this early if Ocon and Haas didn't see the other as a good fit.
Even if Sainz's choice and Bottas's fate drift beyond the summer break, Ocon and Haas have been proactive in ensuring the same doesn't go for them.