A bewildered Esteban Ocon has rubbished the rumours of a relationship breakdown with his Formula 1 team Haas, describing them as “complete bullshit” and lamenting the “damage” speculation like this can cause.<\/p>\n
Ocon spent a good chunk of his pre-weekend media session at the Canadian Grand Prix chuckling in disbelief at the speculation that had dominated the build-up to the Montreal weekend.<\/p>\n
There had been claims – which Ocon has now decried as completely spurious – of a breakdown in the relationship between Ocon and team boss Ayao Komatsu, and of a possible mid-season split.<\/p>\n
“Honestly… complete bullshit, to be honest. It’s unbelievable!” vented Ocon giggling derisively from the very start of his session and through the next five minutes as he went over the topic.<\/p>\n
“We were just talking with Ayao just now. The article I saw was calling him ‘Ryo Komatsu’, which is quite funny. And they were even saying that we had, like, a massive dispute in Miami.<\/p>\n
“This is complete nonsense! Honestly, it’s all fabricated and complete bullshit. As I said, I came to this team for the reason that I know Ayao since so long. I’ve got a great relationship with him. That’s always been the case and there’s nothing like what people have been saying going on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s completely not true. I’m fully focused on what I have to do, the job I have to do with the team. I’m fully on board with the team for the whole year. I’ve got a contract with the team. Ayao will tell you more later – but honestly, it’s crazy how things have escalated! Honestly, it’s been like- I try not to pay attention too much, but when it gets so big, it’s almost like bullying in a way.”<\/p>\n
Ocon did come in from some public criticism over his 2025 performances from Komatsu in the off-season (which will also be explained partly by their existing relationship allowing for such a level of candour), and he has not had the easiest time against team-mate Ollie Bearman in his stint at Haas so far – but there has been no credible suggestion that he’s in the firing line mid-season.<\/p>\n
He said that there was nothing that should preclude himself and Haas from discussing a joint future – but, at just four rounds in, that “these chats happen in the summer, they always do”.<\/p>\n
“That ‘dispute’ about Miami, it’s pretty crazy,” he continued. “Obviously, we had a tough weekend after Miami, so we sat down with Ayao – but we discussed a lot of different things. How to maybe improve this, how to get better, what was going on with the car in the weekend. It was no- it just a normal conversation!\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I don’t know who’s fabricating this, but I better not see this guy – because he’s going to get a big one!<\/p>\n
“So I don’t think the person who has written this article is here right now – which is a shame! I didn’t read the full thing, but as soon as I translated one article, I saw ‘Ryo Komatsu, dispute in Miami,’ I was like, ‘well, I don’t need to read more about it, to be fair’.”<\/p>\n
But despite Ocon emphasising how the gossip was patently ridiculous, he admitted it couldn’t help but interfere with things.<\/p>\n
“At the end of the day, I try not to pay attention to that too much – but that became so big for no reason, that I had to get a bit involved into it, our team, and we had to have a look and understand where that could have come from.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Obviously it’s been relayed on all the s***ty medias that are there on socials. And, yeah, it became so big that obviously you can’t just not notice it. If you live in a cave, maybe, but you can’t.<\/p>\n
“But as soon as we talked to the real people that are involved with the story, it’s quite clear that it’s complete bullshit. So you are obviously much more fine [relaxed] when the story is very clear inside – because [otherwise] it even gives you the doubt. ‘Did we actually have a dispute?!’\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Obviously, I’m human, so it does affect in a way, it does affect my family, it does affect the sponsors that are obviously counting on me and supporting me, for many races and seasons for some sponsors that I got. And it’s disappointing to see, you know, that you can make such damage to a reputation of a driver in two or three days – while there’s nothing founded, and these people would just get away with no issues. You know, they just fabricate stories, put all the s**t on your back, and it’s all fine for them. It’s quite crazy.”<\/p>\n
Ocon has scored just one point to Bearman’s 16 this season so far, and is 1-5 down in the head-to-head qualifying (sprints included), with an average gap of two tenths.<\/p>\n
The one-lap gap is clearly something to be addressed – but the points situation, Ocon believes, is a mirage.<\/p>\n
“For me, it’s very clear, the reasons on why I’m missing a lot of points compared to Ollie in the beginning of the season. The safety cars, is the full-stop reason. I’m not going to say I would have been in front of him in the championship, but at least I would have scored over 10 points easily in China and in Australia.<\/p>\n
“The pace has been good, the work has been good. For a lot of different reasons I didn’t score as many points as I should have, but the work that we are doing is decent and as long as this is happening, the results will come and that’s the most important thing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bewildered Esteban Ocon has rubbished the rumours of a relationship breakdown with his Formula 1 team Haas,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-685751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}