{"id":671029,"date":"2026-10-31T17:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T17:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/671029\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T17:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T17:00:09","slug":"f1-haas-bring-in-ryo-hirakawa-for-esteban-ocon-for-mexico-city-grand-prix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/671029\/","title":{"rendered":"F1: Haas bring in Ryo Hirakawa for Esteban Ocon for Mexico City Grand Prix"},"content":{"rendered":"

Esteban Ocon has been replaced at Haas by the team’s Japanese reserve driver Ryo Hirakawa for the remainder of the Mexico City Grand Prix<\/a> weekend.<\/p>\n

Ocon, who is leaving the team at the end of the year, drove in Friday practice but the team released a statement on Saturday saying Hirakawa would drive instead of the Frenchman on Saturday and Sunday.<\/p>\n

The team gave no further details about the reasons behind the decision, although a spokesperson at Haas said it was not because the Frenchman was ill.<\/p>\n

The move comes after Ocon had a dispute with his race engineer<\/a> Laura Mueller during second practice on Friday about tyre strategy.<\/p>\n

Mueller told him over the radio that they were switching him to use the medium tyres on his race-simulation run because team-mate Oliver Bearman’s run on the soft was “not great”.<\/p>\n

After Ocon asked for clarity, Mueller told him: “We have to do medium.”<\/p>\n

Ocon replied: “No, no. I wanted the soft. Don’t do that to me. Come on.”<\/p>\n

Haas declined to comment on whether the decision to replace Ocon was related to the exchange and whatever aftermath it might have had.<\/p>\n

Ocon is currently looking for a race seat for next year and it appears his chances are slim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Esteban Ocon has been replaced at Haas by the team’s Japanese reserve driver Ryo Hirakawa for the remainder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-671029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}