On the face of it, two races into a season is very early to be talking about a driver losing his place on the Formula One grid, Red Bull and Liam Lawson from last year excepted.
But it is a position that Esteban Ocon could find himself in come season’s end if performances relative to young teammate Ollie Bearman do not improve, with Haas Team Principal Ayao Komatsu admitting at launch that the team “expect(s) more” from Ocon in 2026.
Ocon joined the team as an Alpine refugee, giving up his seat one race early at the end of 2024 after a tumultuous two years as teammate to Pierre Gasly came to a head when Ocon ran into Gasly at the Monaco Grand Prix, with the former publicly admonished by then Team Principal Bruno Famin. That followed another acrimonious ending to a teammate partnership with Fernando Alonso two years prior.
The one time Grand Prix winner was 15th in the Drivers’ Championship standings in 2025, three points off 20-year-old Bearman and Ocon is yet to score this season, while Bearman has two top 7 finishes in a Haas that looks a strong contender for points in the early races of F1’s new era in 2026, while comparisons from last season can be split almost exactly between the first and second halves.
2025 Rounds 1-13
In the first half of last season, Ocon seemed a good fit for an improving Haas team as a rapid but raw Bearman would often match the Frenchman for pace if not consistency. This showed in Ocon’s slender average Grand Prix qualifying pace advantage throughout the first half of 2025 of 0.013s, excluding sprints and the Australian Grand Prix where Bearman failed to set a lap time following a crash in practice.
A disappointing start in Australia as the team briefly struggled with ride heights and balance around the high speed Albert Park circuit was followed up with an excellent fifth for the Frenchman in the Chinese Grand Prix, which coupled with eighth place for Bearman confirmed the team’s second highest ever points haul since their inception in 2016.
Ocon would then follow that up with an opportunistic eighth place at the Bahrain Grand Prix two rounds later, before began a run of ten Grands Prix without a points finish, save for two points in the Belgian Sprint race.
Ocon, who by now was in his eighth full season in F1 looked on paper to have the measure of the Brit on race day, having finished ahead seven times to three in the ten races where both drivers finished, and scored further points with seventh place in Monaco, ninth in Canada and a point for tenth in Austria alongside a Sprint fifth place in Belgium.
At this point, he led Bearman 27 points to 8, with notable errors including crashing under red flags in practice at Silverstone seeing the Brit pick up four penalty points and a ten place grid penalty before both men collided in the Grand Prix as one example of the team leaving points on the table early on.
2025 Rounds 14-24
The summer break marked an upturn in form for Bearman, while Ocon grew less comfortable in the car following an undertray upgrade brought to the British Grand Prix.
Bearman put in an excellent charge from the back of the grid in the Netherlands to finish sixth and followed that up with well executed races to ninth place in Singapore and Texas ahead of a more headline grabbing end of season.
That paled in contrast with Ocon’s struggles, with a particular low point in Azerbaijan as braking struggles stymied his weekend on the way to 14th before an 18th placed finish in Singapore.
After a major upgrade package was brought to the Circuit of the Americas, Bearman’s season peaked in Mexico with a fourth position finish as he briefly threatened a podium in amongst the chaos caused by Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton’s early battle, but he was able to keep behind title challenger Oscar Piastri and both Mercedes drivers, Kimi Antonelli and George Russell on pure race pace.
He followed that up with sixth place in a chaotic Brazilian Grand Prix for another flawless drive to finish as best of the rest once again and move well clear of Ocon in the standings, with the Frenchman recovering to take seventh place in the Abu Dhabi finale.
2026 – and what has Komatsu said?
Bearman has continued the form that has led to calls for his promotion to the Ferrari team of which he is a member of their junior driver academy.
For much of the Australian Grand Prix weekend the two were evenly matched and started Bearman 12th and Ocon 13th, but the race was a different story.
Ocon renewed rivalries with former teammate Gasly to finish outside of the points in eleventh, while a strong start for the Brit saw Bearman take seventh ahead of RB’s Arvid Lindblad.
While the Frenchman could count himself unfortunate at the timing of a Safety Car at the Chinese Grand Prix, it is inescapable that a chance for good points went begging solely because of a clumsy move to hit the Alpine of Franco Colapinto after he left the pits, with a top eight finish more than likely. That would have backed up a fifth place for Bearman and left Haas third in the early Constructors’ Standings.
It is a trend that Team Principal Komatsu has been picking up on since the autumn of last year, telling The Race: “I’m not saying he’s (Ocon) slow, but when he’s not 100% comfortable with the car, he cannot go there. Whereas Ollie, Ollie will drive around anything.”
At the launch of this season’s car in January, that feedback became more pointed.
He told F1.com, “If you look purely at a sporting result, without going into details, for sure nobody is satisfied with Esteban’s sporting result last year.
“He’s a team mate against a rookie – yes, an amazing rookie, but nonetheless he’s got 10 years of F1 under his belt. He’s a race winner, he’s a podium finisher, so we expected more from him. Obviously it’s not totally his fault. Sometimes as a team we couldn’t give him the car that he was comfortable [with].”
The Frenchman’s contract is thought to expire at the end of this season, and having fallen out with Alpine and what was Force India prior to their Stroll-backed takeover, no realistic prospect of a drive at another midfield team and with no top drive likely, it’s difficult to see where else he’d fit in what could be a very busy silly season ahead of 2027 should he fail to convince Komatsu.
Ocon’s start to the season has done little to ease his situation, and after losing out to a rookie in 2025, 2026 is threatening to become a Sophomore smashing at the hands of Ollie Bearman.
Ricciardo – 10