Toto Wolff Saves Esteban Ocon From Alpine’s “Punishment” in F1 Expert’s Analysis

Alpine Team Principal Bruno Famin threatened “consequences” to Esteban Ocon after his overambitious Monaco GP move, causing a collision with teammate Pierre Gasly. Experts theorized that the Enstone outfit would ban the Frenchman from racing at the Canadian GP. In an otherwise heartbreaking post on Instagram, Ocon denied this, affirming his participation in Montreal. But according to an F1 pundit, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, the 26-year-old driver’s manager, would have prevented this anyway.

Ocon has been a Mercedes junior driver since his F1 beginnings. He hired Toto Wolff as his manager and also became Mercedes’ reserve driver in 2019 when no team offered him a seat after his Force India exit. Earlier this year, the Alpine driver even reiterated his “close ties” with the Silver Arrows after Lewis Hamilton‘s exit. According to French reporter Fred Ferret, Wolff’s closeness with Ocon would’ve ensured the Alpine contract didn’t let the French team take advantage of him.

“It’s not possible to get a driver out because there are contracts existing,” Ferret said on the F1 Nation podcast. “So you can’t ban a driver unless he says, ‘Okay Alpine is a bad team. I don’t want to drive anymore for Alpine.’ This is not the case. Okay, they had an accident, but he’s a Mercedes contract guy. So you can imagine, men like Toto Wolff are reading the contract very thoroughly,” he added.

“I’m pretty sure that they were aligned that, ‘You’re not allowed to skip my driver from a race unless there is FP1 coming for a young driver.’ Maybe Jack Doohan will drive on a Friday morning instead of Esteban, soon,” Ferret elaborated, adding how “that will be the only punishment for Esteban for that incident between him and Pierre.”

Missing an extra FP1 session after finalizing his exit might not even be any kind of punishment for Ocon. But the tension that reached a tipping point in Monaco was apparently a build-up of months full of uncertainty.

Esteban Ocon’s exit discussions with Alpine were on for “several months”

Alpine’s A524 is the team’s worst car in the ground-effect era. Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon were visibly unhappy and looking for ways out from the clutches of this scrambling team. F1TV presenter Lawrence Barretto reveals that Alpine were particularly discussing Ocon’s future for a long time.

“Sources say a wider discussion regarding Ocon’s future had been ongoing for several months and this latest incident was only part of the argument not to renew his contract,” Barretto wrote for F1.com. “Alpine were also aware that Ocon was considering his options elsewhere on the grid, with Haas and Sauber/Audi particularly keen on recruiting him.”

The British reporter also revealed that Bruno Famin informed Ocon of Alpine, axing him 4 days before the official announcement. The Frenchman is now left with 16 races worth of uncomfortable interactions with the team. The Canadian GP would be the first indicator of what is to come.