Ocon dropped – is it the end of his F1 career?

Ocon is managed by Mercedes and came through their young driver programme.

When he lost his Force India seat, it was Mercedes that took him on as reserve driver in 2019.

At one point, team principal Toto Wolff was considering putting Ocon in the race team alongside Hamilton. One of the reasons he did not was he thought their characters would clash, that the relationship would be too combustible. Valtteri Bottas was retained for 2020 after all.

At the same time, George Russell, the next Mercedes protege, was excelling for Williams and Mercedes concluded from the data they had on both that Russell was their guy for the future, not Ocon.