Esteban Ocon has become a Formula One race winner with a contract with Alpine that will keep him with the team until the end of 2024.
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The purchase of the Force India team by a Lawrence Stroll-led group midway through 2018 threw a kink in the works of Esteban Ocon’s F1 plan, with the Frenchman being replaced at the conclusion of the year by Lance Stroll at the new Racing Point squad. Esteban Ocon has become a Formula One race winner with a contract with Alpine that will keep him with the team until the end of 2024. However, as he recounts things weren’t looking so well only a few years ago.
Ocon sought sanctuary at Mercedes, where he is now the team’s backup driver for 2019. However, he admitted that there were some gloomy times throughout his year on the sidelines, beginning with the first race of 2019. “It was definitely tough and I had some very low moments mentally,” says Ocon. “especially from that one incident in Australia. I got there at the first race in 2019, and we were supposed to have quite a big test programme; I was supposed to drive the car quite a bit, and when I got to Australia, I got told I was not going to drive the car for the next six months”. expressed the Frenchman.
“That was quite a big hit and I remember leaving the Melbourne track, going to the rental car and I cried in the parking lot. So it was definitely a lot of low moments… I don’t have much problem to sleep, but I remember that night, that was not the best sleep.” revealed Ocon.
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Mercedes, too, and especially Team Principal Toto Wolff’s attentive leadership, placed Ocon on the way back to a full-time F1 position with the Renault team, now rebranded as Alpine. “I was very well looked after [at Mercedes] from James Vowles, from Toto, from Gwen Lagrue, you know. They were looking after me and trying to find solutions. Toto was quite clear and he said, ‘You will drive in 2020.’ And I said, ‘How can you be so sure Toto?’ And he said, ‘You will see’.
“I didn’t want to believe him because I didn’t want to be disappointed, but it’s been quite a few times that when he spoke about something, it actually happened. And it did happen again. I got a drive in 2020 not in Mercedes but in Renault and that was the start of something new for me.”
The next race in the F1 calendar is the Spanish Grand Prix and is all set on Sunday, 22 may 2022.
