The French Formula One Team – Alpine Renault, has announced they have decided to drop Esteban Ocon for the final round of the 2025 season in Abu Dhabi.
Esteban Ocon will be replaced by the former Formula 2 driver Jack Doohan, son of the Australian Motorcycle racing legend and 5x 500cc Champion Mick Doohan. Jack Doohan was set to replace the incumbent Esteban Ocon for the 2025 season, who was set to leave the Enstone squad after the end of the current season for Haas.
It seems Esteban’s exit from the French Manufacturer has come a lot earlier than previously believed – leaving the team a race early and not seeing off the season for a team that gave him his Formula One comeback in 2020 and got his first and only win in formula one in Hungary 2021. Mind you, this was also the team’s first win after a streak of winless drought.
The announcement to part ways even before the season ends does come as a shock, especially when it was just two races prior, where Esteban Ocon led Alpine’s charge in the wet Brazil race, where they scored a double podium. But before that, and since then, he’s performance has been lacklustre, whereas his teammate Pierre Gasly racked in some head-turning performances. This stark contrast between the two cars’ performance made Esteban ocon and various journalists question whether the machinery shared by the two French drivers, harbours some discrepancies, creating tension between the driver and the team – which could answer the early exit of Esteban Ocon, but an early exit for Ocon means an early debut for some.
Jack Doohan, Alpine’s Reserve driver in 2024, will prematurely take the helm of Ocon’s A524 in Abu Dhabi, which will also mark his full-time debut in Formula One, which, regardless, was set to materialize at Melbourne, Australia in 2025 for the next season.
On the latest developments in their driver line-up, this is what Alpine Team Principal Oliver Oaks has stated – “it’s a win-win situation” ” Both decided to part ways mutually, allowing the team to embed Jack Doohan before the start of the season and releasing Esteban Ocon to try his hand on the Haas VF-24 in the post-race tyre test in Abu Dhabi, which before the recent developments was not allowed to do so due to contractual obligations.
