Esteban Ocon reveals intriguing redesign for his 2025 Haas F1 car
French driver talks changes to Haas car for his adaptation from Alpine
Esteban Ocon has revealed that the Haas Formula 1 team ‘completely redesigned’ his car’s steering wheel in order to help smoothen his transition from Alpine for 2025.
Having spent the last five years driving the Renault-powered Alpine car, winning a single grand prix in Hungary in 2021, Ocon moves to the Ferrari-powered Haas team for 2025.
Ocon drove the Haas for the first time at the post-season Abu Dhabi test last December and says he “felt a lot of very positive areas” of the car.
To help his adaptation from the Alpine, Ocon revealed on Tuesday ahead of the F1 75 launch event in London that Haas redesigned its steering wheel for him in the space of two months.
“There’s been a lot of different things coming in, a lot of different ways the Renault and Ferrari car work differently,” he said.
“So, there’s been a lot of positives and I’ve been able to get around with things that I just feel super comfortable straight away and I’ve been able to work a little bit the same I’ve been working the last five years.
“That took basically two months to get it done, which was super impressive.
“The whole steering wheel needed a complete redesign for the clutch paddles, for example.
“That was a big, big job and I had that in my hands last week, which was incredible.
“The throttle pedal was the same thing, just redoing all the switches that I want like I was used to having at Force India and Alpine.
“Now at Haas it’s been able to be done. Also the way I was using the power unit in the past, I’m going to be able to do the same racing-wise for the [energy] deployment and the cut of the deployment, which is very good."
Esteban Ocon on Haas adaptation
“Obviously there are a lot of positives driving the car in Abu Dhabi, I felt a lot of very positive areas and obviously there are some weaknesses that we are working on.”
With three days of testing taking place next week in Bahrain ahead of the new campaign getting underway, Ocon is confident that what Haas has seen in the wind tunnel will correlate on-track.
“I think by day three we are going to be able to give a sensible picture, hopefully, of where everyone is,” he added.
“You always doubt, you’re never 100% sure. But I reckon it’s going to be a little bit more clear from then.
“We know where our performance should be, which is a good thing. We still need to validate it from the sim and check the numbers that we put in the sim were correct.
“That’s always the unknown but I have good confidence that they could be right and if they are right it should be an interesting season. It’s going to be close between everyone, so let’s see.”
Quotes provided by Crash F1 Editor Lewis Larkam
