Esteban Ocon is refusing to treat Haas’ decision to drop him at the end of 2026 as the end of his Formula 1 story, but the Frenchman made little attempt to hide his frustration when discussing his impending departure on Thursday in Sepang.
Haas confirmed ahead of this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia that Ocon will leave the team after the current season, bringing an end to a partnership that recently produced some encouraging progress but ultimately failed to secure him a place on the 2027 grid.
The timing is particularly awkward for Ocon. Only days earlier in Azerbaijan, amid mounting speculation about his future, he had insisted that he “deserve[d] to be here” abd that he was “one of the best out there”.
Now that his exit has been formally announced, he is left searching for another route into next year.
Ocon refuses to look beyond F1
For now, Ocon insists there is only one destination he is interested in.
“My focus is on Formula 1,” he told reporters. “That is clear, that’s where I belong, that’s where I want to be. I’m not going to look elsewhere. That’s very clear.”
There are still potential avenues, although the options appear increasingly limited. Ocon has been linked with Cadillac, but Valtteri Bottas currently appears set to retain his place with the American team for 2027.
Rumours of a move into the FIA World Endurance Championship with Toyota have also circulated, although those reports have subsequently been dismissed by the Japanese manufacturer.
Ocon, meanwhile, insists he is not yet facing a repeat of one of the most difficult periods of his career. After losing his Racing Point seat at the end of 2018, he spent the 2019 season without a race drive before returning to F1 with Renault in 2020.
But he does not believe history is repeating itself, at least not just yet.
“I’m not facing a 2019 yet,” he said. “There are still hopes, and hope is what motivates me to stay on track.”
‘I deserve to be here’
Yet behind the determination to find another seat is a very clear sense of disappointment with the way his Haas chapter is ending.
Ocon joined the team for 2025 and helped it identify and address weaknesses with its machinery, contributing to a campaign that represented a significant step forward for the American outfit.
That makes his impending departure all the more difficult for him to accept.
“It is frustrating because it’s not really the way it should be,” he explained. “I’m not going to go into detail in what happens in the past; I’m looking ahead, I’m looking at the future.
“But, I mean, I deserve to be here. I put the hard work [in], we benefitted from finding out all these issues very early since I joined the team. It has been very, very good for everyone.
“So, of course, I don’t think I deserve to have this for the future, but there’s opportunities all the time in Formula 1 and that’s what I’m looking at, looking at the future, not the past.”
The bluntness of the Frenchman’s assessment is notable. He has chosen not to publicly dissect the circumstances behind Haas’ decision, but neither is he pretending that he believes it represents a fair reward for his contribution.
Read also:
Instead, the 29-year-old is falling back on the quality that has repeatedly kept his F1 career alive when circumstances have turned against him.
“I’ve always had to fight super hard in Formula 1 for everything I had,” he added. “I’ve always had tough moments, people pulling me lower than the ground, digging my hole, but
“But I’ve always shown that, with resilience, hard work, and motivation, I can overcome those moments. That’s what I will keep doing.”
With his Haas departure now confirmed, Ocon's immediate task is to turn that resilience into another opportunity.
He may have lost one route to the 2027 grid, but in Sepang he made it clear that he is not yet prepared to accept that his Formula 1 journey is over.
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via X and Facebook
