Driver Deep Dive: Esteban Ocon

The F1 Funcast is a podcast about Formula One. The hosts discuss various topics related to the sport. They are currently doing a series called "Driver's Deep Dive" where they focus on a specific driver each episode. In this episode, they talk about Esteban Ocon and his journey to Formula One. They mention his recent success and discuss his background growing up in a working-class family. They also mention how they got into Formula One and their appreciation for the welcoming community of fans. Welcome to the F1 Funcast, the Formula One podcast made to entertain, educate, and inform all Formula One fans on all things Formula One. Here are your hosts, James, the race leader, Messer, next weekend, or this weekend, or whenever, and Connor, the crew chief, gag man. It kind of depends on what you're looking for. So without further ado, here is the F1 Funcast. That's right. Welcome back to this week's scintillating episode of the F1 Funcast. Today we'll be doing a driver's deep dive episode on one Mr. Esteban Ocon. And for those of you that haven't been with us for a driver's deep dive episode in the past, it's kind of a more freewheeling, sadly, sadly, these are usually just me. If you're tuning in like I know most of you are to hear Connor, the crew chief gag man on the episode, he doesn't usually come on these little tweener episodes. He's a busy man. He's got a lot to do. And it would be too much of me to ask him to join me two, three, four times a week to talk F1. I bother him enough as it is through texts and calls every weekend anyway. So the driver's deep dive series is kind of my own little pet project here where we take a driver of the week or of the biweekly or, you know, a driver of the day. And we decide to research them and learn about them, talk about them. And it's been a fun project so far. So far we've done episodes on the likes of Nick DeVries, Oscar Piastri, Lando Norris. I think there's a couple more out there. You can find them down the feed in the podcast feed. And today's episode is going to be a good one. I think it's very relevant and it's about time that we do our episode on Esteban Ocon. He's coming off his P3 finish in Monaco last weekend and looking strong again this weekend so far in free practice in Barcelona. So I felt like his star is starting to shine a little bit. So why not shine a light on Mr. Esteban Ocon and his path, his journey to Formula One, how he's doing and where he's headed in the future. So welcome to this edition of the driver's deep dive. Let's buckle up and get started. So before we get started on Esteban Ocon, I'd just like to take a minute to talk about how I got into Formula One. I realized that I asked the chief on his first episode how he gets in, got in, I'm sorry, to Formula One. And I know that when we have guests and people on, we will be asking them their origin story in Formula One. So I'd just like to share with you all a little bit about how I got interested in Formula One. And to be honest, it was totally by accident. It was a couple years ago. I was at my father's house for, I believe it was Christmas time. It was the holiday season, I think. And we were looking for something to watch on TV. And I had suggested, and I think we started watching a little bit of a Netflix documentary called Evil Genius. Have any of you out there seen this Evil Genius? Pretty morbid documentary about a depraved individual who robbed a bank with a bomb. I won't get into it too much here. But we started watching it and realized this is not really the family-friendly Christmas type of show that we wanted to watch during the holidays. Although I do say it's a good documentary. If you haven't seen it yet, go ahead and check that out, Evil Genius, on Netflix. It's definitely fascinating. But so we were hanging out looking for something to watch. And my father and brother had already seen the first season of Drive to Survive. And I know Drive to Survive, for a lot of diehard gatekeeping fans, there's a big eye roll that comes along with it. And everyone thinks we're just Drive to Survive fans, new fans, and maybe so, that's what got me interested in Formula One. But I will say that between my father's recommendation and my brother's in particular, where he's the guy that introduced me to Breaking Bad, he's the guy that introduced me to, I believe, The Walking Dead. So I have always taken his recommendations pretty seriously when it comes to TV watching. And he said, let's throw on Drive to Survive, check it out. And so we put on the first season there and we power watched that, maybe that first night. And then my wife and I on the flight home watched the next season. And then we watched the next season as soon as we got home. And I found out that Connor, my cousin, the crew chief, is a big Formula One fan. So we started texting about it a little bit. It was clear to him that I didn't have a knowledge base like he did, but also that I was interested in growing that knowledge. So we would text over the weekends as the season was coming up. And it just grew from there. And the first season that we watched live, I'm sure it was annoying to the chief with my constant questions about what's going on and everything. But I decided right then and there that this is something I'm very interested in. It's something new to me. Everyone's always looking for something new that they can watch and share and get into. All my sports teams in my life that I root for, they've all won championships now. I've seen success on a lot of different levels in the things I watch and root for. So Formula One was totally new to me, almost like a new hobby. So I was hooked. I was hooked. I got into it. My wife got really into it. We would get up every Sunday, make a big breakfast. And see, we're in California, so a lot of the race times are particularly difficult for us to get up for out here, as they're usually about three or four in the morning. So we would get up and we'd make a big breakfast and coffee and all that, and we'd watch the race and then go back to bed sometimes. So that's how I got into it. And I've found Formula One fans to be a pretty great community in all. I know there's some people out there that really feel like, for whatever reason, that – and I've talked about this on other podcasts – but they feel like, for whatever reason, that once they discovered Formula One, they didn't want anyone else to find it. And if you found it through means of Netflix or any other way, that you're not welcome and you're not a real fan. But I've found that, for the most part, our listeners and the people out there in the F1 world have been very welcoming, very encouraging, and I've gotten a lot of great feedback from people and a lot of helpful people out there on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. You know I say it every week, the usual places. But I just wanted to give my origin story a little bit on how I got into Formula One through recommendation from my father and brother, who had been watching it. They had actually watched the Abu Dhabi debacle a couple years ago with Red Bull and Mercedes, and they had just watched it when we flew in for – maybe it wasn't the holidays then, but I guess it was November, December, somewhere in there. And so they were into it. They had been watching live, and they got me into it. Two people who I always take their recommendations seriously, and I appreciate that. So it got me into this, and here we are talking about it every week, every couple of days, and it's become a real passion of mine. Hopefully someday we'll be able to get down to a track and see these cars live. That would be a real dream come true. But for now, we're just growing that knowledge base. We're learning as much as we can about Formula One, and today in particular, we're going to learn as much as we can about Esteban Ocon. So with that housekeeping or housecleaning, or what do they call them now? I guess it is housekeeping still. They don't call them maids. It's housekeeping. But with the housekeeping out of the way, let's dive into Esteban Ocon and his rise to Formula One. Right, so Esteban Ocon, born 9-17-1996. That makes him, oh boy, I'm doing this on the fly, 26 years old, going to be 27 in September. He was born in Evereau, France, which I guess is about an hour, hour and a half outside of Paris. And what I found really interesting about Esteban is that he, unlike a lot of the drivers in Formula One, he grew up in more of a working class type of environment, we should say. His father was a mechanic, and they lived above the mechanic shop where he worked. And Esteban, you know, in Formula One, a lot of people come from big money, big, big money, and have a lot of support from sponsors and are kind of put into that world at a very young age with a lot of money behind them. And it wasn't like that for Esteban. He tells stories often about his parents sold the mechanics shop in their house and bought essentially a mobile home, or I guess not a mobile home, what would you call it, a camper? Maybe over across the pond, you might call it a caravan. But they bought a camper and toured around with him in his karting career, which is quite the sacrifice for a family to make on a son's dream, and especially because Formula One is such a tricky place to get a foot in the door, motorsport in general is a really tough competitive cutthroat world. I mean, any professional sport is cutthroat and very tough to get into, but I feel like Formula One in particular is very difficult because of the financial burdens and just the winnowing of the field over years and years and years. So a lot of bravery from Esteban's parents to sell everything and follow their son's dreams. And he tells stories about pulling up in their little camper, and you've got these super wealthy, super well-to-do people that you're competing against pulling up in their mega huge mobile homes, probably bigger than my apartment here now. And it could be a little bit intimidating and a little bit kind of gives you that outcast vibe when you're younger. When you're young and anything about you sticks out or is different, it can attract attention. And Esteban certainly felt and gained a reputation throughout his career of being a bit of an outsider, I suppose, or maybe just not part of that wealthy clique, and he talks about that extensively in some interviews that I've seen that it just, you know, it was a hard scrabble way to get to where he was going. It wasn't like some of these guys we've talked about that just breathe into it and pay their way to an F1 seat. Esteban really, he came from less. I don't want to say he came from nothing. I don't know his family and his family's situation. We don't talk much about families on the F1 Funcast. This is about the drivers, but Esteban certainly did come from more humble beginnings than a lot of drivers you see in Formula One. And it's interesting, though, isn't it, that now on the grid and on the paddock, I guess his best friend out there is Lance Stroll, who comes from the exact opposite economic end of the spectrum than Esteban Ocon, and you have to wonder, does that attract each other? Does Stroll feel an outcast in the same way Esteban did in terms of, I am different than the rest of you? You know, Daddy Stroll with his billions and billions of dollars and Lance showing up to these events in the biggest mobile home, you know, that you could possibly have, that can also kind of push you to the outside of the inner circle of anything and put you on the, you know, kind of on the defensive and on your back foot. And I'm not saying Lance Stroll was given, you know, given any disadvantages, but I wonder if personality-wise and feeling-wise, if they connected a little over being, hey, remember when we were younger and everyone treated us differently because we didn't come from the same world and same place as they did? Well, I'm fascinated to see if they ever speak to that a little bit more, because when you watch the paddock and you watch the weekends, they certainly do seem to be pretty tight out there. And it's, you know, it's to say that you don't have to come from the inner circle to get to where you want to go. You don't have to follow the rules or be in the clique or be a part, if you have a dream and you have the support of your family and people who believe in you, you can follow that as far as you want to. And that's the feeling I get learning and reading and listening to Esteban talk about his youth was that his family was all in behind him. And whether they were the poor kids at the track or whatever, they didn't back down. He didn't back down. He didn't let that derail him from chasing his dreams and look at where he is now. So Esteban, I feel, is a good example of hard work, dedication, and risk-taking. Sometimes you have to take a risk to get to where you're going, but certainly in his youth, his family did support him and help him along getting to where he's going. I can only imagine that life in a camper, essentially, touring around Europe, missing school, learning on your own, being, everyone's all in on you. The pressure also must have been very great for Esteban to perform, you know, because if your family sells their house and they uproot everything to follow your dream and then you don't produce, that could be, that's the type of thing that weighs on people for a long time into adulthood and the rest of their lives. So fortunately for Esteban, it did work out and he was able to make it through carting and get the attention of the big guys and work his way into Formula One today. One little tidbit about Esteban that I picked up in my research here is that growing up, he was a huge, huge Michael Schumacher fan, which I'm sure many of you listening are. Many people I talked to were big Michael Schumacher fans, but if you take a look at Esteban Ocon this weekend, notice he always has some red in his helmet and that red is an homage to his childhood hero, Michael Schumacher. I thought that was pretty neat. You know, in some sports people put, you know, they wear the numbers of the people they looked up to or they try to have little ways to shout out the greats from before and I think it's great that Esteban certainly keeps the red on him as an homage to his hero, Michael Schumacher. So there was Esteban carting away, his family towing behind him. I believe it was his mom, dad, and the family dog all in the mobile home situation they had going on. And I don't mean to say mobile home like they were living in some poor state, but they were on the go. They were mobile in their home and they were really putting everything in on Esteban and at the age of 12 they started to see these efforts pay off as he was drafted to the Renault Academy and kind of started getting his name out there and started building his career. But think about that, age 12 and you're already kind of like a veteran on the circuit and now you're getting into the Renault Academy age 12. So then at age 16 he actually competed in Formula Renault, did pretty well there. And here's what I find interesting. At age 16, let me double check my notes here, make sure I'm right, no, I'm sorry, at age 18 he won the F3 World Championship and if you've listened to the Driver Deep Dive before you know generally I think that you win the F2 and then you go on to Formula 1, it's kind of the path everyone takes. But in Formula 3, believe it or not, Esteban Ocon won the championship in 2015, it must have been, won the F3 championship over one Max Verstappen. So Max, we all know, was the prodigy and the, for lack of a better comparison, kind of the LeBron James, they knew from an early age Max was on his way and he was going to be great and be a driver of our time. But for Esteban to beat Max Verstappen in F3 at the age of 18, that had to be something that really kind of was a proof of concept for Esteban, that what he was doing was working and that there was a future in racing for him and especially in the Formula series. So, just interesting, he placed in front of Max Verstappen that year and then he signed, so I want to go chronologically through his F1 career here now and so in 2017, the following year he signed with Force India, he was 19 years old when he made his F1 debut. So from 12, signing with Renault Academy, driving around in the caravan with his parents, to 7 years later making his first start in Formula 1 and so 2017 he was on Force India, 2018 he also drove for Force India, which then became Racing Point, if you remember that year there was the scandal, or not scandal, but I guess the bankruptcy of the Force India backers and the people there and I guess it was a scandal around the paddock and the team changed to Racing Point, so that's where Esteban Ocon found himself at the age of 20 being part of the Racing Point team and then 2019 they didn't bring him back and he actually was the reserve driver for Mercedes and he was a driver behind Hamilton and Valtteri Barras and Toto Wolf has always had a keen eye for Esteban Ocon, I've noticed through all my research here, he's been up on him since he was, like I said, since he was driving around with his family and his dog, going race to race, Toto Wolf kind of always had him on his radar, so he scooped him up in 2019 to be the reserve driver for Mercedes and that stint didn't last too long as in 2020 he moved over to Renault which has morphed into Alpine where he finds himself today and Esteban Ocon, so he's 26 years old, he's made 117 Formula One starts at the time of this recording, if you're listening in the future, I hope that's a much higher number for Esteban and same with, so he does have one win, which I mean in this era for a midfield car to pull off a win is huge and he won the Hungary Grand Prix in 2021, I believe it was a wet to dry race and Esteban came out on top and that really solidified his future, I believe, as a Formula One race winner and podium position finisher and if you can put that Alpine at the front of the grid and finish P1 in a Grand Prix, you're set, the proof of concept has been completely confirmed and once you're at that point, the only place to go really is up and personally that's where I think Esteban Ocon is headed in Formula One, I think the future is bright for Esteban Ocon, not just in the long term but in the short term as well, I mean the P3 at Monaco was beautiful, seeing him up on the podium there with Fernando Alonso and Max Verstappen and we've got good feelings for him this weekend in Barcelona and I think Esteban Ocon is going to be sticking around for quite a while, I always fear that we're going to have to be doing some some goodbye podcasts to these guys as the silly season comes around and there are a few a few unnamed drivers who I think might we might be making that podcast for sooner rather than later, Al Fatahri, someone we might have already done a an episode about but you know hopefully not and hopefully they all stick around but I do think Esteban has really put himself in a position to take control and do what he wants with his future for the next few years and of course Formula One is a results-driven business and if you know the performance falls off in the next year or two then that's that's he could be he could be gone, he could be in IndyCar, he could be somewhere else and but I don't I don't know and I'd love to hear what you think so let me know what you think the future holds for Mr. Esteban Ocon, email me at f1funcast at gmail.com or find us on instagram at f1funcast at gmail.com or hit up connor at connor gagnon c-o-n-n-o-r g-a-g-n-o-n on instagram he's always excited to talk to you guys about all things Formula One and to be honest I do these deep dives to advance my knowledge so when I talk to him I don't sound like such a schmuck um but that's it that's that's what we've got on Esteban Ocon I'm excited to see what the future holds and I know I say that about every driver but we did a poll this week on instagram and every single respondent said he is ready to launch he's on his way up a guy in the prime of his career you know he's got a good thing going in Alpine and I'd like to say a good thing going with his teammate Pierre Gasly but I hear that they are a little standoffish towards each other which is fine you don't need to be best friends with all your teammates but I think Esteban Ocon's future is bright I think the weekend ahead for Formula One in Spain is fantastic will be fantastic and I can't wait so our next episode with the chief we're going to be recording any day now is all about aerodynamics in Formula One and I've been researching all week about aerodynamics and and I think it's the perfect week to be doing that episode with all these these upgrades on the cars most teams are bringing upgrades to Barcelona I know Mercedes has Ferrari has Red Bull McLaren almost everybody's brought some kind of upgrade and and most of the impact is with the aerodynamic effects on the car so look for that one in your feed sometime early in the next week aerodynamic theory we're going to give you maybe a high school level education on aerodynamic theory but that's why we're here we're having fun and we're learning and we're sharing and it's that's what this is all about so if you want to share with us find us anywhere out there on social media find Connor hit me up thank you for listening to this episode of the Driver Deep Dive on Esteban Alcan enjoy the weather hug your loved ones until the next time you hear from us the F1 FunCast yeah that's a checkered flag we're out of here