Bottas to carry on at Mercedes
Bottas stays at Mercedes while Ocon joins Renault, leaving Hulkenberg fighting for F1 future
Two major pieces of the
2020 Formula 1 driver market fell into place at Spa as Mercedes announced it was keeping Valtteri Bottas as
Lewis Hamilton’s team-mate, and its alternative option Esteban Ocon slotted in at Renault – where he will replace Nico Hulkenberg alongside Daniel Ricciardo.
Those decisions leave Hulkenberg fighting against incumbent Romain Grosjean for the second seat at
Haas, where Kevin Magnussen has an ongoing contract. Haas had also been chasing Ocon.
Renault team boss Cyril Abiteboul said Ocon would “with his Mercedes experience, age and youth, bring us some of the dynamism we need in the team today” and said that a change had been required after three years with Hulkenberg.
“He is someone who has done an extraordinary job for the team, but of course after three years he realises, and he is right, that we are not progressing very quickly on the chassis,” Abiteboul added. “I think we needed someone to look a little further into the long term, with freshness and enthusiasm.”
Ocon has been a protege of both Mercedes and Renault during his career so far, and had previously come close to landing at Renault for this season before a late change of plan meant it swooped to grab Ricciardo from Red Bull instead.
Though Mercedes will continue to manage Ocon, Abiteboul made clear that the champion team has no right of recall on the young Frenchman for the duration of his two-year contract with Renault.
Mercedes’ decision to keep
Bottas means he will get a fourth season as team-mate to Hamilton. The team had said it would spend the summer break deliberating on whether to continue with Bottas or switch to Ocon, and made its decision a week before Spa.
“You know when you’ve not signed that anything can happen in this sport,” said Bottas. “You never want to be left between two chairs. So for sure I was trying to make a plan for something else but then things started to go the right way. It makes me very happy to know about the future and I don’t need to worry about that now. I can just really focus on the job.”
Hulkenberg had pre-empted his exit from Renault ahead of Spa by adding a light-hearted social media caption about an “exciting Thursday” to a French magazine cover about Ocon potentially joining his current team.
“It was a bit different, there was a change of dynamic in the week after Hungary,” said Hulkenberg. “I could tell there was something going on, that there might be a change ahead.”
He suggested a “bundle of factors” had led to the split and hinted that Ocon and Renault both being French might be “one piece of the puzzle”.
Ocon regaining a race seat after a year on the sidelines as Mercedes reserve makes it inevitable that at least one 2019 F1 driver will be out of the field next season.
With most of the other potential vacancies likely to be filled by drivers who already have junior programme affiliations with the teams in question, there is a strong chance that Grosjean and Hulkenberg’s battle for the second Haas seat will be a battle to stay in F1.
“There’s one guy that’s not going to be on the grid next year. Who’s it going to be? I don’t know,” said Grosjean. “At the minute I’m quite confident that I’ll be on the grid next year.”