Esteban Ocon leaves Haas, and Toyota's Le Mans winner wants his seat
Haas signed its first grand prix winner, and kept him for two seasons
Haas confirms that Esteban Ocon will leave the team at the end of the 2026 Formula 1 season. The 30-year-old Frenchman arrived from Alpine for 2025 as the first grand prix winner the American team had ever hired. Eighteen months on, he trails his 21-year-old team-mate Oliver Bearman by 61 points to 45, and Haas has not yet named his replacement.
Bearman has outscored Ocon 20 points to 7 in 2026
Bearman's lead was narrow in 2025: 41 points to Ocon's 38 at the end of their first season together. The new 2026 regulations opened the gap. Bearman has 20 points this year to Ocon's 7, and he leads their qualifying battle 13 to 6. Ocon sits 16th in the standings, three places behind his team-mate, with Haas seventh among the constructors after 15 of 23 rounds. He argues the VF-26 has been inconsistent under him, and he did score again in Baku, but the trend was set long before.
Ocon leaves with one win and four podiums, all from his Alpine years
Ocon should reach 203 grand prix starts by the finale in Abu Dhabi, ten years after his debut with Manor in 2016 and two seasons at Force India. His one victory came at the Hungaroring in 2021, and his other podiums were Sakhir in 2020, Monaco in 2023 and a wet Interlagos in 2024, all with the Enstone team. His farewell statement was defiant: this is "absolutely not the end" of his Formula 1 career. Seats are scarce, though. Aston Martin has already kept Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, and a rumoured switch to Toyota's endurance team has been played down inside that squad.
Toyota's title sponsorship puts Ryo Hirakawa, 32, on the shortlist
Toyota's technical partnership with Haas began in October 2024, the team has raced as TGR Haas F1 Team since January, with Toyota providing design, technical and manufacturing support, and its reserve driver is a Toyota man. Ryo Hirakawa, 32, won Le Mans in 2022 and the World Endurance Championship in 2022 and 2023. Three days before Ocon's news, Hirakawa brought the No. 8 TR010 home first at Fuji by 0.591 seconds. Toyota's technical director David Floury says French junior Esteban Masson would take his Hypercar seat if he left, which keeps the Le Mans programme covered either way.
Rafael Camara and Leonardo Fornaroli are the 21-year-old options
Rafael Camara, the Brazilian who leads Formula 2 and serves as Ferrari's reserve, is increasingly seen as the favourite. That fits a team that runs Ferrari engines and found Bearman in Ferrari's academy. Leonardo Fornaroli, the Italian who won the 2024 Formula 3 title without winning a race and took Formula 2 in 2025, is McLaren's test driver and was fifth in first practice at Barcelona, half a second off Oscar Piastri. McLaren wants to keep him, so he would come on loan.
AutoNext Take
Ocon was hired to lead a young team through a rule change, and the young team-mate took the job from him. That is not a disgrace. Bearman is 21 and quick, and on today's evidence he is the driver Haas is building around. The fair reading is that Ocon brought exactly the experience Haas asked for, and the 2026 car rewarded a different driver.
Haas should pick Camara, and it will be the right choice. A Ferrari-engined team with a Ferrari graduate already outscoring a race winner has a working model, and a second 21-year-old repeats it. Expect the announcement before December's finale in Abu Dhabi. Hirakawa deserves a Formula 1 race, but Toyota gains more from keeping a WEC champion in its Hypercar than from a 33-year-old rookie season.
