He debuted with a backmarker team before moving up to a bigger one, where he partnered with an established driver – a team leader for several years. Things didn't go smoothly. Aside from a few disagreements over strategy that led to heated radio exchanges, there were also a couple of crashes. Nothing too unexpected when a young, ambitious driver joins a team not to play a supporting role but to prove himself.
Have you guessed the driver's name yet? One last clue: he speaks French.
His name, of course, is Charles Leclerc. Or did you have someone else in mind?
One day before his second Formula 1 victory – in the 2019 Italian Grand Prix – Leclerc seriously annoyed not only Sebastian Vettel but also his boss Mattia Binotto by refusing to provide a slipstream for his team-mate in the final moments of qualifying. The German then broke team agreements in Sochi by refusing to cede the position he had gained at the start thanks to Leclerc's tow. Later that year, they crashed in Sao Paulo, with both sharing the blame, and a few months later, the Monegasque collided with his team-mate on the opening lap of the second Red Bull Ring race, causing both Ferraris to retire from the race.
Team-mates in Formula 1 shouldn't crash into each other. Ideally, they should always put the team's interests ahead of their own. But sometimes they do crash. And they often disobey, or at least question, team orders. This description of a "young and ambitious" driver could also apply to Max Verstappen. His defensive drive against Daniel Ricciardo in the 2018 Azerbaijan Grand Prix was perhaps over the line. The famous crash that followed was already their second, as Verstappen had also ended his team-mate's race at Hungaroring in 2017 – destroying Ricciardo's car in an overly aggressive move on the first lap. And remember Max's infamous "No!" in response to a team order to let Carlos Sainz through in Singapore during his debut season?
Neither Leclerc nor Verstappen have the reputation of being bad team-mates. Charles is probably too good-looking to be seen as a villain, and Max... well, he just wins everything, doesn't he? All joking aside, they don't have such a reputation probably because they're just seen as highly competitive individuals – and it's only natural for such drivers to sometimes put their own interest ahead of the team's.
For Esteban Ocon, however, the image of someone "constantly crashing into his team-mates" has become a defining part of his image – especially if you ask around on social media.
You'd have to go back to his time with Sergio Perez at Force India to find the roots of this perception – and they did have their fair share of run-ins.
"I don't know exactly why," shrugs Ocon when asked about his reputation as we speak in Bahrain during his first pre-season test with Haas. "I think things have probably been blown out of proportion at times. Yeah, there's been some incidents, for sure, and things that I would have liked, you know... to have gone differently at times.
"But when I look back, I've tried my best to work well with the team and my team-mate, and I think every time we've achieved the goals together with what the car could have achieved – whether it's Sergio, Daniel [Ricciardo], Fernando [Alonso] or Pierre [Gasly]. I've worked well with all of them, to be fair. Yes, there have been incidents that I would have liked to have been different, for sure. But over time, it's been very little."
But was it really "very little"?
During their two seasons together, Pérez and Ocon had five separate incidents on track, though Ocon is keen to point out that these never affected Force India's championship position. Given the pecking order of the era, he and his team-mate often found themselves racing against each other, with the team well behind the top three, but mostly ahead of the midfield.
"They were five?" Ocon laughs when asked about those incidents.
"I do remember them all, for sure," he adds. "I've always tried to do my best in the car, I've always tried to get the maximum out of everything I had in my hands. It's never a good thing to have contact with your team-mate, and that's not something I ever want.
"But yeah, it happened a couple of times because we were racing very close, and a little bit on our own – because that first year in 2017, we were between sixth and eighth most of the time, and that was us [always] on the same row of the grid.
"Now... yeah, I've said things in the press that, being young and hungry, I probably wouldn't have said now. And I have full respect for Checo, and it's been a pleasure, really, to be his team-mate."
Ocon is much more careful with the media these days. What he could have said, though, is that people seem to forget that of those five clashes, essentially only one was largely his fault – the one in Baku in 2017, where he pushed Perez into the wall coming out of Turn 3 on the first lap.
Later that year in Hungary, the Mexican punted Ocon's car into Turn 1, and a few weeks later, he twice squeezed his team-mate into the outside wall on the run to Eau Rouge. It was after that race that Ocon lashed out in the TV pen: "That's how unprofessional he is. He's never done that with any other team-mate, and yeah, I think I'll go man to man to see him and, you know, tell him the truth – and I'm not going to be scared of him."
He later posted the infamous tweet accusing Checo of trying to "kill" him twice.
A year later in Singapore, they would touch again after the Frenchman attempted to overtake Pérez on the opening lap, only to be pushed off the track. "And it's Ocon again, who is squeezed into the wall by his team-mate," commented David Croft live on Sky Sports as the Frenchman parked his three-wheeled car on the side of the track. But while four out of five of their incidents were mostly due to Pérez being overprotective, it is Ocon who has been left with the "bad team-mate" moniker.
It probably stuck much later, though – perhaps during the time Ocon shared a garage with Fernando Alonso at Alpine. They also had their fair share of on-track action. Remember the Spaniard's radio message after the first lap in Hungary in 2022?
"Never in my life have I seen a defence like Esteban's today. Never."
Yet in two years, they only touched once, in the sprint race in Brazil. While trying to overtake Ocon on the main straight, Alonso damaged his front wing. "Thanks to our friend," he announced on the radio. And as their relationship came to an end after two years, Fernando noted in one of his interviews that he was "always fighting against one car all year", suggesting that he wasn't always happy with the way Ocon raced against him.
And while there's probably some truth to that, it could also be argued that the two-time world champion has never been shy about pushing his own narrative through the media. After all, the team-mate he probably praised the most during his career was Stoffel Vandoorne, as almost every time he beat the Belgian in qualifying, he cited the full list of titles his younger colleague had won during his junior career. Now, according to Alonso, Lance Stroll is a future world champion, too.
"We had a few battles for sure," says Ocon of Alonso. "But yeah, out of two years we touched once, I think, and it didn't have any consequence because we had the race of our lives the next day. We started last [the next day] and I think Fernando finished fifth and I finished [eighth] in Brazil.
"But I admire Fernando a lot. He's always been one of the drivers that I've respected the most for what he's done and for his driving skills and his ability on the track.
"For me, he's the driver who thinks the most outside the box. And I talk to him a lot! You know, even now, at the [F1 75] launch, we were talking about go-karting. Because we live and breathe racing and that's a very common point that we have together. It's been an honor to work with such a champion – and a two-time world champion."
But Ocon doesn't want to get into a war of words, which is understandable given the sensitivity of the subject. Especially now, after two years sharing the Alpine garage with Pierre Gasly – and the now-legendary Monaco crash, which left Ocon facing a wave of criticism on social media.
"With Pierre, it's a very long story," he smiles. "I think only we can understand where we come from and our relationship. But even Pierre himself said that we've kept the team together in difficult moments. And, you know, luckily we were there to save the ship sometimes. It's been good to have moments like Brazil. Even though we have our history, that moment will always be something that we both remember as super positive.
"From where we come from, I don't think anyone would have believed that we would be in the same team and on the podium in F1. It's been great to experience that together.
Given their animosity, it was almost as if the whole world was waiting for them to crash into each other. The restart crash at the 2023 Australian Grand Prix, while one of the central moments in Drive to Survive, didn't really add much to the discussion of their relationship – it was clear that the two Alpine drivers just happened to find each other in the chaos of the late restart. But while that was written off as more or less a "racing incident", the first-lap crash in Monaco last year – this time clearly Ocon's fault – was met with an outpouring of criticism towards the driver with a 'history of crashing into his team-mates'.
"Even though Monaco happened, it didn't cost the team anything," he says now. "I raised my hand. I would have liked things to have gone differently, for sure. But, yeah, we've done our best every single time. And I think, yeah, we got the maximum out of the car, you know, throughout these two seasons."
And while he won't elaborate much, he admits that it's been frustrating to see so much criticism online, especially since not many have tried to really look into the so-called 'history of crashing into his team-mates'.
"As soon as there's a headline, people like to jump on it," he says. "But yeah, what can I say? I think, from my perspective, we did what we needed to do [with each team] and took the opportunities when they came. And we worked well together – with Pierre, with Fernando, with Daniel. We also worked well with Checo. We ticked the boxes, in the end. So that's the most important thing. And I'm not a guy who's here to crash into my team-mate. That's bullshit."
"It is what people look at. And when everybody is, you know, laughing about a topic, people like to follow and jump on the same thing. But you know, with time, hopefully things will be forgotten."
Ocon is the first to admit that he loves racing hard. After all, like every other driver in F1, he's a highly competitive individual. Had he been lucky enough to get a winning car, this tendency to fight hard with everyone – including his team-mates – could have been seen as a mark of a future champion. To some extent he was seen that way during his Force India days. But the next step up never came.
On some occasions, he probably needed to be a bit more careful when it came to racing a car of the same colour – but at the same time, he wouldn't be wrong to point out that he's never had an easy team-mate during his time in F1. And with at least some of them having significantly larger social media followings, he has probably provided some of those followers with reasons not to like him too much.
Either way, given the image – justified or not – that has stuck to him, Ocon probably knows he can't afford to give people any more reasons to add to that narrative. In his new chapter with Haas, for the first time in his career, he will be the clearly more experienced driver. Now, it's the guy on the other side of the garage who comes in with youth and an eagerness to prove himself.
"Well, I don't really focus on that," he says when asked whether he feels more responsibility at Haas now. "Sure, the team relies on me for my experience. And what I think about things sometimes is very important – for me to give all the feedback very early, and for us to see what we need to improve and the weaknesses of the car and the strengths of the car. And the team was very receptive.
"But, you know, Ollie [Bearman] has more experience inside the team than I do! Obviously, I've got the years of racing experience, but he's come in as the most prepared rookie you can be. And that's very good, because I'm sure we'll push the team forward very quickly once we get to the first race, and that's going to be important to get the maximum out of everyone."
One thing is for sure: regardless of his image, Ocon has been hired by Haas to work for the team. His new boss and long-time friend Ayao Komatsu has praised how Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen managed to work together during their two-year stint with the team, despite their own history. And that's exactly what he expects from Ocon and Bearman.
For the Frenchman in particular, there could hardly be a better opportunity to prove himself and dispel the reputation that has dogged him for so long.
