Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRenault

Ocon poised for Renault reserve role

GP3 champion Esteban Ocon is poised to be named as Renault's reserve driver for 2016, F1i understands.

F1i's French site reported at the weekend that Ocon was in line for a potential switch back to Enstone should Pastor Maldonado lose his drive to Kevin Magnussen, with the Dane having originally been in talks over a reserve role.

Following Maldonado's announcement that he will not be on the grid in 2016 as a result of sponsorship issues between Renault and PDVSA, Magnussen is set to replace the Venezuelan. This in turn has opened up the reserve seat for Ocon.

Currently under contract with Mercedes, Ocon started his professional career under the guidance of Gravity and carried out his first steps in F1 driving a Lotus-Renault in Abu Dhabi in 2014 (pictured above).

Total is keen to promote a French driver, and an agreement is expected to be found with Mercedes to free Ocon from his commitments, knowing that the German manufacturer can only offer the Frenchman a DTM program in 2016 having been struggling to place its own reserve driver Pascal Werhlein in F1.

F1i understands Frederic Vasseur - who is expected to become Renault team principal and co-owns the ART team which Ocon drove for in GP3 last year - has been playing the go-between with Mercedes to free Ocon from his contract. Vasseur has strong links to Mercedes due to the ART DTM team.

Ocon won last season's GP3 championship in Abu Dhabi, while the year before he took the European F3 title, beating Toro Rosso rookie Max Verstappen.

Renault will announce its driver line-up as part of a team launch in Paris on Wednesday.

Additional reporting by Pierre Van Vliet

Force India winter diary part four - Technical Director

Feature: How to fuel success in F1

Key dates for the 2016 F1 season

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.