{"id":842882,"date":"2026-08-02T18:11:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T18:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/842882\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T18:11:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T18:11:18","slug":"i-went-back-to-the-car-and-cried-esteban-ocon-opens-up-about-his-unexpected-year-on-f1-sidelines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/842882\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI went back to the car and cried\u201d \u2013 Esteban Ocon opens up about his unexpected year on F1 sidelines"},"content":{"rendered":"

Esteban Ocon<\/a> has opened up about the 2019 Formula 1 season, which he spent as a Mercedes<\/a> reserve driver following an unfavourable chain of events.<\/p>\n

Back in July 2018, Ocon was riding a wave of momentum. In his second full F1 campaign, the Mercedes protege was narrowly leading seasoned Force India team-mate Sergio Perez<\/a> in the drivers\u2019 standings, and had just outqualified him seven times in a row \u2013 but that didn\u2019t prevent him from ending up on the sidelines.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was difficult,\u201d Ocon commented when asked about his growth as a driver that year in Autosport\u2019s latest You Ask The Questions interview.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was at Renault that I was supposed to drive, but there was also another team involved at the time. And yeah, with both it created a massive mess-up, I would say, for my year in Formula 1.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ocon\u2019s performance at the time led Mercedes to consider him as a potential replacement for Valtteri Bottas<\/a> alongside Lewis Hamilton<\/a> in 2019, but with both Renault and McLaren<\/a> expressing interest in the 21-year-old, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff awarded Bottas a new contract, which was made official on 20 July.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Ocon went to the McLaren Technology Centre for a seat fit ahead of the German Grand Prix (20-22 July) in case he might be asked to replace Stoffel Vandoorne<\/a> halfway through 2018 ahead of a full-season move.<\/p>\n

\"Renault <\/p>\n

Renault committed to Ocon and insisted his negotiations with McLaren stop, but eventually picked Ricciardo instead<\/p>\n

Photo by: Mark Thompson \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

However, Renault prevailed in the race to sign the Frenchman. A handshake reportedly occurred, but the contract was never signed. When it emerged that\u00a0Daniel Ricciardo<\/a> wanted to leave Red Bull, Renault team boss Cyril Abiteboul didn\u2019t think twice and snapped up the eight-time grand prix winner. Both Ricciardo\u2019s Red Bull exit and his Renault deal were announced on 3 August.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, McLaren had been informed that Ocon wouldn\u2019t be available, so the Woking-based squad had got into advanced negotiations with Carlos Sainz<\/a> to join rookie Lando Norris<\/a> in its 2019 line-up \u2013 as Red Bull picked Pierre Gasly<\/a> to fill the vacant spot alongside Max Verstappen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That is how Ocon ended up spending the campaign as Mercedes\u2019 reserve driver.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a tough year, that one,\u201d the current Haas driver continued. \u201cI was not happy, of course, to be where I was. I was developing a car during the night, and doing the job of two reserve drivers, I was doing it by myself \u2013 they later had two or three drivers doing the job I was doing, so that’s how much commitment I was putting in.<\/p>\n

\"Ocon <\/p>\n

Ocon got limited testing opportunities with Mercedes, despite a Goodwood run<\/p>\n

Photo by: Mark Thompson \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically that car then, when I was coming to the track, was winning races, but I was not inside the seat. So it was tough, especially when I asked\u00a0Shov [trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin], I think in Melbourne, I asked him, \u2018When am I supposed to test?\u2019, because I was supposed to have a lot of testing. And he said, \u2018Oh, you are going to test in July\u2019 or something, so it was three or four months from March to July, I was supposed to test in Ricard.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember I went back to the rental car and I cried, because for me driving was going to be super important to get ready for the following year, so that year for me was like, stay active, try and drive as much as you can in whatever cars it is, and take as much technical feedback as you can, because they are dominating for when you will come back into the race, that was my aim, but it was long.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes dominated the world championship, Wolff picked Bottas over Ocon again for 2020. The Frenchman was eventually signed by Renault, this time to join\u00a0Ricciardo, a move that would yield his maiden and so far only grand prix victory in Hungary the following year. But the rise of George Russell<\/a> meant he never stood another chance of ever racing a Silver Arrow.<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Esteban Ocon has opened up about the 2019 Formula 1 season, which he spent as a Mercedes reserve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":842883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[1035,49,48,3021,578,576,577,590,1881,74894,82,293654],"class_list":["post-842882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-alpine","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-esteban-ocon","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-mclaren","tag-mercedes","tag-renault-f1-team","tag-sports","tag-u201ci-went-back-to-the-car-and-criedu201d-u2013-esteban-ocon-opens-up-about-his-unexpected-year-on-f1-sidelines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}