Crying in the Melbourne car park at 2019 grand prix was my career low – Ocon

Esteban Ocon has described how the lowest moment of his Formula 1 career came when he wept in the car park during the Australian Grand Prix weekend five years ago.

He was facing a season with a race seat having lost his place at Force India to Lance Stroll, whose father had purchased the team. Ocon had been poised to join Renault for 2019, but the deal fell through at the last minute.

Although Ocon found a role at Mercedes as their reserve driver, when he turned up for the first race of the season in Australia he learned he faced a long wait to sample their W10 chassis.

“Turning up at the first race, speaking to Mercedes about when was I going to be testing the car, they said, ‘oh yeah you are going to test in three or four months’,” he told the High Performance Podcast.

“Then I came back in the car back then and I cried in the parking lot, I remember. Luckily we found the solution to come back again.”

“I think that was the lowest [moment],” he continued, “Australia, 2019. I was super-happy for the team also on the success that they were having because I was part of that, I was contributing with the simulator work, all the development.

“But I was like, ‘what if I was driving that car in the races as well?’ It’s so dominating, it’s so fast. I was seeing myself, but not being there, on track and that was quite tough.”

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A deal for Ocon to join another team for 2019 fell through at the last moment. “We had two contracts with teams,” said Ocon. “One was signed, so I just had to sign it, I was going to race for the team in 2019.

“But we decided to not go to this one and go to the other and it didn’t work out with the other. It was for a misunderstanding between parties and things that I was not in control of.”

Ocon felt that was “not fair because it’s not on performance, it’s not on merit. If I’d had a bad season and the performance wasn’t there, I would have understood for me to be on the sidelines.”

“In the end I didn’t lose a year because I learned a lot with Mercedes in 2019 being reserve,” he added. “They were dominating and there are still plenty of things that I use now and makes me more of a complete driver when I came back in 2020.”

He eventually returned as a race driver at Renault, which is now Alpine.

“I missed driving so much and that gave me the love of the sport even more because I’ve realised how lucky I was to be racing in there,” he said.

“When you are so focussed on performance, performance, performance, getting everything around you forget how lucky you are to be driving one of those cars. When I came back in 2020, I said, okay, now you’re not going to take the smile away ever from my face ever when I’m driving a formula One car. So that’s why I’m always happy.”

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Ocon’s experience in 2019 reminded him of his situation five years earlier. He won the European Formula 3 championship in 2014 but was left without a drive for the following year and considered returning to his father’s garage to work as a mechanic.

“The program I was in, which was called Lotus F1 Team Junior and Gravity Sport Management, had no money for me to continue at the time. And in this transition from 2014 to 2015, I was on the phone constantly calling Toto [Wolff, Mercedes team principal] at the time and asking him if there was any solutions for me. I met him during that year because I won with a Mercedes engine in Formula 3.

“With Gwen [Lagrue, former Mercedes junior team chief], Toto and Fred Vasseur we found a solution for us to be able to continue racing and to race in GP3. And I won the title as well so I got in the Mercedes junior program and from there on it was back en route.”

But Max Verstappen, who finished third in F3 that year behind Ocon, had already landed his F1 debut with Red Bull. Ocon admitted that frustrated him at the time.

“From Max not winning the title, finishing third and then going into F1 and me not having even an option to continue racing, that was tough to swallow for sure. I was very pissed off in those times.”

“That was very, very difficult because to me it was not fair,” he continued. “Not saying that I would[n’t] go to F1, because I always believed that my time would come, that if I put in [enough] hard work, got the results, my time will always come. But in those moments, I wasn’t sure that I was going to even continue racing and for me, that wasn’t fair.

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“I’m glad that, Toto, Gwen, Fred all these guys saw that it was not fair and found solutions for me to continue.”

Ocon clashed with Verstappen before and during their F1 careers. He described the rivalry between the pair of them as “very fiery” at times, especially when they were karting.

“Everybody was a little bit scared of Jos [Verstappen] and Max at the time because Jos was driving Formula 1 before so he is [known] for how fierce and how scary he can be, talking to other young kids and all that on go-kart tracks.

“But my dad and myself, we were never scared because we just wanted to race, and wanted to race hard. And we’ve raced hard. We’ve raced really hard and at times we cross lines, at certain go-kart races.”

“We sometimes didn’t finish [in] the place that we were supposed to finish because of how hard the fights were in go karts,” Ocon admitted. “But all of that made me learn a lot on how to race and I hope it made him learn a good amount as well.

“Then we met again in Formula 3 later. From go-karts in 2011, three years break, and then we met in Formula 3 racing for the title. And there it was hard racing as well.

“So I’ve enjoyed the racing with Max. I’ve always enjoyed tough racing, it’s always cool to me. Racing side by side, being very close, that’s what racing is all about. There’s nothing else that makes me that excited.”

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