Esteban Ocon to join Haas F1 for 2025 Formula 1 season

French Formula 1 driver Esteban Ocon will join Haas F1 for the 2025 season, the driver and Haas confirmed in a statement Thursday.

"I'm delighted we've secured Esteban Ocon's services for MoneyGram Haas F1 Team," said team principal Ayao Komatsu. "The experience he brings, not just from his own talent base but also from working for a manufacturer team, will be advantageous to us in our growth as an organization."

Ocon joins Haas at a key inflection point in its F1 lifecycle. The team dropped its beloved founding team principal Guenther Steiner in early 2024 in favor of Komatsu, an engineering specialist with an eye on technical excellence. Haas also announced that both of its current drivers, Nico Hulkenberg of Germany and Kevin Magnussen of Denmark, would be leaving the team for the end at the end of the 2024 season to make way for fresh talent. (Hulkenberg has announced he'll be racing for Audi in 2025; Magnussen remains without a seat for next season.)

Komatsu's first move was to sign teenage phenom Oliver Bearman from Ferrari, Haas's partner team. Bearman filled in for the ailing Carlos Sainz at the Saudi Grand Prix earlier this season and scored points upon his debut. He's full of potential, but Haas knew it would need an experienced driver next to the youngster to help him grow. Ocon, a motor racing veteran with 146 Formula 1 races and one Formula 1 win under his belt, should bring that experience in spades.

But the move doesn't just help Haas: it's vital for Ocon, too.

He joined Alpine, the French F1 team, in 2021 on a long contract with the goal of helping the team move up the constructor's standings. But infighting, teammate drama and the loss of his biggest executive supporter in former CEO Laurent Rossi has left Ocon adrift. This opportunity with Haas will offer him the chance to rehabilitate his image and to participate in what he believes to be a healthier technical environment than the one at Alpine.

Haas, the only American team on the F1 grid and an organization known for moving fast and breaking plenty, should be a massive cultural switch for Ocon. But to hear him tell it, it's a cultural switch he couldn't be more excited to make.

"[At Haas], there really is only one person who decides, and that counts in lots of technical choices," Ocon told French newspaper L'Equipe. "There aren't 36,000 people upstairs to ask for validation.

"You're not faced with something you ask for and they tell you 'it's not done because the guy's gone on vacation.' At times, when we made technical remarks [at Alpine], there was never any feedback.

"That's why five years later, on this car, there are still some shortcomings that there were when I arrived in 2020."

Ocon will see out the rest of the 2024 F1 season with Alpine before making the switch to Haas during the offseason. His next race is this Sunday, July 28, at the Belgian Grand Prix in Spa.