Esteban Ocon, Mercedes, Melbourne, 2019

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

Formula 1

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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.

Esteban Ocon, Renault, Red Bull Ring, 2020
Ocon returned at Renault – now Alpine – in 2020
“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.

Max Verstappen, Esteban Ocon, Formula Three, Hockenheimring, 2014
Verstappen and Ocon raced each other in karts – and F3
“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.”

Toto Wolff, Esteban Ocon, 2018
Wolff has guided Ocon’s F1 career
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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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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20 comments on “Crying in the Melbourne car park at 2019 grand prix was my career low – Ocon”

  1. isthatglock21
    19th March 2024, 14:36

    Cheer up old boy. Always look on the bright side of life. You could’ve been crying in a Tesco car park instead.

  2. Oh, no, poor thing. Anyway…

  3. Contrary to the people above, I don’t think we should be mocking Esteban here. I mean, being that young and realising your career has already peaked is going to be a bitter pill to swallow. Luckily for Ocon it wasn’t the absolute end of the line, but it very easily could’ve been if not for the one French team having some interest in having a French driver. Had Renault not shown any interest, Ocon would’ve been in Formula E or WEC or some other lower category now, bye bye F1. And that at age 23. Surely him having emotions about that isn’t something we have to ridicule?

    1. Sure. But it’s not the end of the world…

    2. I agree there @sjaakfoo – i appreciate him talking about this and it take it as a positive he does.

  4. I think Ocon had the poorest financial upbringing of all the drivers on today’s grid, which probably contributed to some of these career blows. Am I correct? If so, who do we reckon was closest?

    1. Hamilton?

      1. Lewis clearly never had to worry about getting a contract, once he got into F1.

      2. Oh yes, the slum thing. A straight lie, from someone who never said anything truthful in a lifetime.

    2. not on today’s grid, but the closest i can think of is Giovinazzi.

  5. The linked podcast changed my perception of Ocon. He comes across really well, shares aspects of his upbringing and racing career from the heart and is, of course, a real person. It’s great to get these human views of drivers we only usually see repeating the same old clichés in press conferences.

    1. Haven’t listened to the podcast yet, but I agree that it’s good to hear some of the real human behind the PR face teams show us.

  6. I thought the lowest point was hitting verstappen while lapped in brazil 2018, a bit like his father did to montoya in brazil (look at the case) 2001!

    1. Yellow Baron
      19th March 2024, 23:58

      Maxs’s fault for turning in on him. Defending it in the first place was a bit silly but then driving his usual way expecting others to get out the way.

      1. Yeah, why would a back marker make way for the race leader? Given Ocon’s story (of frustration vs Max) above it is even more clear there was full intent in that collision. Should have been a race ban at minimum. FIA is a weak organisation. We saw it with Vettel vs Hamilton at Baku as well. Doing such things intentionally should have the highest possible penalty.

      2. You’ve got it the wrong way around. It was a bit silly for Max to go for it there when he could just wait a corner and breeze by him on the first straight. But Ocon seemed to have some unfinished business with Max and defended way too hard there.

        1. I think you should watch the incident again. Occon was already behind Max. Occon run in to Max while unlapping. Maybe Max could have given him more room but Hamilton was only seconds behind Max and he couldn’t afford to let Occon in front and slow him down in the following laps. Occon shouldn’t have interfered with the lead drivers because he was a lap behind

  7. Crazy to me that it looks like Ocon will have a longer career than Ricciardo given how they went head to head.

    People say there’s no point to being in a slow team at the back, but you’re also not given the pressure that Ricciardo got at McLaren for example. If you’re just not the right fit with a fast team, it can kill your career worse than being stuck in the midfield.

  8. I gained so much more respect for Esteban after reading this. This is why its so important to tell one’s story. Esteban certainly deserves to be in F1 and unfortunately finds himslef in a slow team at the moment. Its stories like this and fan reaction that may make a big team consider him

  9. Wolter Bisschop
    20th March 2024, 17:59

    He forgot to mention that he was in prema team. Considered to be the top team in the f3 championship, whereas Verstappen drove for one of the lesser teams, being Van Amersfoort Racing (a lot less reliable).

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