Esteban Ocon has spoken out for the first time after confirming his exit from the Haas F1 team.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Speculation over the Frenchman’s future has been rife for several weeks, with Haas known to be evaluating a handful of contenders for a 2027 F1 seat.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
In the build-up to the Bahrain Grand Prix at Sepang, the team confirmed that Ocon would exit at the end of the 2026 campaign.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
It will bring his two-year stretch with the team to an end, putting doubt over his future on the grid with limited spaces available for the 2027 season.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
As he begins to close out his ninth full season in F1, he admitted it is irritating to be placed in such a position.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“It is frustrating because it’s not really the way it should be,” Ocon told media including RacingNews365.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“I’m not going to go into detail about what happens in the past. I’m looking ahead, I’m looking at the future.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“That’s what’s important, but I deserve to be here. I put [in] the hard work.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“We have benefited from finding out all these issues very early, since I joined the team, and it has been very good for everyone.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“I don’t think I deserve to have this for the future.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“But there are opportunities all the time in F1, and that’s what I’m looking at, looking at the future, not the past.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
[Article continues below]\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tOcon labels F1 as priority in 2027 plans<\/p>\n
Outside of Haas, only four seats have not yet been confirmed, including two at Mercedes, where George Russell and Kimi Antonelli are heavily expected to be retained.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Racing Bulls has not yet declared its 2027 line-up, but the team’s options are limited to its current drivers and Red Bull junior talent.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
It means that Ocon will likely have to take on a third driver role next year in order to retain his links in F1.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“My focus is on F1, that is clear,” he said. “That’s where I belong, that’s where I want to be. I’m not going to look elsewhere, that’s very clear.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“But you never know what can happen in F1. As you guys know, things move every two seconds, so I’m still working on trying to find a solution for next year.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“You guys will be aware as soon as we have more news. Our focus is that and to do well on track.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“We’ve done pretty well at the last races, and for me, that’s the best way to show that I still deserve to be in F1.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“Of course, I need the car that follows, which we didn’t have for many, many races, including last year.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“If we have that, it should work, as it did in Baku, as it did in Madrid. We’ll see.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Esteban Ocon has spoken out for the first time after confirming his exit from the Haas F1 team.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3518,3521,3519,3522,3520,3517,3515,3513,3516,3514,111,139,69,3512,213],"class_list":["post-617316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motorsport","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}