EXCLUSIVE: "No hiding" between Haas F1's history-making duo

One of the most pivotal influences on an F1 driver’s weekend is the role played by their race engineer.

After ending a four-year stint with Alpine, Esteban Ocon is in the process of forming a bond with a brand new race engineer having made the switch to Haas for the 2025 campaign.

Ocon is working with Laura Mueller, who became F1’s first female race engineer at the start of this year following a promotion which reflects the sport’s steady shift to becoming more inclusive.

Halfway through their first season and Ocon is relishing the history-making partnership.

“We are fully up to speed yes,” Ocon told Crash.net in an exclusive interview at Silverstone. “Laura is working super hard. I’m working very hard alongside her to make sure we’re as optimised as we can for the whole weekend.

“It’s been fantastic to work with her and on my side of the garage, Laura is leading a lot of people. I’ve got Sacha [Fouquet], a young performance engineer coming from F2, and Mike [Dawkins] who is doing all the mapping etc. He’s been there for years and has tons of experience and he’s a great addition. He compliments the whole thing which is great.

"We can always do better but if you look at how we’ve taken the opportunities recently, it’s really been awesome. We’ve seized all the opportunities there were when we had the opportunity to take it with the car, so it’s been good.”

Mueller’s determined character and hard-working nature has made her an ideal teammate for Ocon.

“She doesn’t count hours,” the Frenchman explains. “She’s really into the details, like I am. I can be very tough at times on small little details, double checking things.

“It’s not that I don’t trust people, it’s just I like to understand myself why we’ve made these decisions. There is no hiding. If we think it’s not possible, we will say it, from one to another.

“If Laura thinks I can improve this certain thing, she will tell me. If I think she can improve a certain thing, I will tell her. There’s no judgement because we’re in the same boat together and we need to move forward.

“It’s very strong and very good. But we need to look after each other for the whole year because it’s a long season. Staying healthy, having the energy high is quite important.

“For example, I was not feeling great in Austria and now I think Laura is not feeling great. We made sure she’s got the right vitamins and all this to make sure she can go through the weekend.

“It can happen in these double headers and you meet so many people and stuff like that. Performing once is a good thing, but you need to perform 24 times. That’s a big thing.”

Adapting to a new home, car and engine

As well as building new relationships with Haas’ technical team, Ocon is adjusting to a new environment. In just over six months at the American outfit, he is already feeling fully at home.

“I’m feeling good,” he said. “We’re still working on things which are quite important for us but learning about the car every single weekend, working on the small details every time we go out and working super well with the team overall and it’s been really strong.

‘I’m very much onboard with the whole team and the thoughts and the motivation that they have. It’s all very straightforward for racing. There’s only one thought behind it. It’s getting more performance out of the car and fixing the issues and reacting to the situations.

“I haven’t found that in every team, I can tell you. It’s very good because there is not all the politics more than the actual sport. And this always should be the priority and I’m happy this is the case.”

Ocon has also had to adapt to a new car - Haas’s VF-25 challenger. A recent update has helped cure some of the early bedding-in troubles Ocon faced.

“I’ve worked on finding where the issues were and now with that new update, hopefully it’s going to go in the direction of development that I’ve spotted earlier in the year,” he explained.

“So all the things that we’ve worked on are hopefully going to benefit us from now on. So I’m looking forward to seeing if that’s going to help us or not.”

Ocon is one of several drivers going through an adaptation process this year having switched teams over the winter.

On paper, it appears to have gone smoothly for Ocon, who sits 10th in the championship having racked up 23 of Haas’s 29 points so far in 2025. However, he insists it has not all been plain-sailing.

“It hasn’t been easy for sure. There was a lot of new things to learn when I got into this team,” he said. “I think we’ve done a really good job by trying to get every scenario, every bit of detail, the big ones out of sight quite early. Then we worked on the smaller things.

“What’s still difficult is because that car hasn’t been developed by me, that I find some limitations in some things that I am not happy with, still in this moment.

“So now we are having a package which I hope will go in the right direction in fixing the little balance problem that I have in particular. The team has been really good at reacting to this.”

Ocon has also had to adapt to Ferrari’s power unit, having previously driven with Mercedes and Renault engines.

“Overall, we all have the same tools, just organised differently,” Ocon replied when asked about the challenge of getting to grips with a new power unit.

“Some things are very good. Some things are very different but overall it’s been a big step in the right direction for me. I really enjoy racing with this power unit, I think it’s a big step forward and gives you much more flexibility.

“I won’t criticise the others because that’s not the way I am but I found things I was very happy with as soon as I joined the team and things that are easy to work with.”