Ocon sidelined by Haas: The reason behind the split

The partnership between Haas and Ocon, which was already nearing its end, came to an abrupt conclusion last weekend. Just before the third practice session, the American team decided to drop the Frenchman with immediate effect. Haas gave little explanation as to how or why, despite repeated requests for answers from the media, including GPblog. The team made it clear only that Ocon was not ill.

While the F1 paddock is usually rife with leaks, this time there was initially complete silence. Plenty of people knew what had prompted the sudden departure of the one-time Grand Prix winner, but nobody dared to say it out loud.

Now, following conversations with insiders, a clearer picture of what happened is gradually emerging. One contributing factor — though not the reason for his dismissal — appears to be an incident during the second practice session.

Ocon reacted sharply to his race engineer, Laura Muller, after she instructed him to follow a different strategy from the one they had agreed on. Instead of using soft tyres, the team wanted Ocon to run on mediums in FP2. “No, no, I want softs. Don’t do this to me,” the Frenchman replied.

The subject appeared to have come up again during the debrief, prompting another loud and emotional reaction from Ocon. This did not go down well with team principal Ayao Komatsu, among others, it is said. Ocon is said to have sensed this and later wanted to apologise to the Japanese team boss. Bild wrote about this first.

The story is Komatsu was not interested and wanted to leave the room. Ocon is then said to have grabbed the team principal. However, there was no physical violence, something the driver had already denied.

In any case, this was the final straw for Komatsu, who — after consulting team owner Gene Haas — decided to replace Ocon with Ryo Hirakawa.

Haas and Ocon are now discussing the termination of his contract, which runs until the end of the season. For the French driver, his F1 career may have come to an end on a Saturday in October, as he does not have a team for next season.