While the action on the track at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix wasn’t particularly exciting, a lot was going on off it.
With so many seats left to fill ahead of the 2025 Formula 1 season, drivers and their entourages are sounding out potential options for next year.
Ted Kravitz was delivering all the latest information he had heard in the paddock on Ted’s Notebook (19/5 5:26pm) after the race in Imola.
Valtteri Bottas was spotted heading into Williams’s motorhome during the weekend but joked he only met team principal James Vowles to ask for some coffee.
Meanwhile, Kevin Magnussen’s seat at Haas remains under threat following his eventful weekend in Miami.
However, Kravitz explained that Alpine driver Esteban Ocon is definitely looking for a new seat after the 2025 season.
The £90,000-a-week driver has scored the team’s only point of the season so far and both drivers were nowhere near the top ten once again in Imola.
It’s been a tough campaign and the 27-year-old doesn’t see it getting any better next year.
READ MORE: Alpine driver Esteban Ocon’s life outside F1 from net worth to girlfriend
Ted Kravitz says Esteban Ocon is definitely looking for new race seat in 2025
It’s hard to blame Esteban Ocon for seeking a new challenge away from Alpine next year.
He’s had five seasons with the team since joining Renault in 2020 and despite them helping him win his only Formula 1 race thus far, things have been getting worse over the past two years.
Ocon didn’t finish on the podium in 2022, but alongside Fernando Alonso, they achieved a 4-place finish in the Constructors’ Championship.
The Frenchman even outperformed his more experienced teammate in the Drivers’ Championship that season, but Alonso jumped ship to Aston Martin and was replaced – eventually – by Pierre Gasly.
Alonso saw what was coming and Alpine fell to 6 in the standings last year and there were already whispers over the winter that things weren’t going well ahead of 2024.
That came to pass in Bahrain when Alpine were the slowest team in the paddock and although they’ve slowly improved this year, the progression isn’t enough for Ocon.
Ted Kravitz believes that Ocon is on the market for a new race seat next year and one Dutch journalist believes he already knows where he’s going.
There are still two teams below them in the Constructors’ Championship this year, but you could make feasible arguments that Sauber and Williams are better long-term bets than Alpine at this moment.
READ MORE: Everything you need to know about Alpine F1 Team from team principal to lineage
Esteban Ocon hoping to become the latest F1 driver to switch teams for 2025
Speaking about the futures of both Alpine drivers, Kravitz said: “On the driver market, are [Esteban] Ocon and [Pierre] Gasly looking for new teams to join?
“Yes, I think they probably are. Ocon’s deal is definitely up, I think Gasly has another year left on his deal to stay at Alpine but Ocon is definitely looking to change teams as understandably he’s starting to think that they might not have a quick car next year either.
“But, yeah Ocon is well and truly on the market.”
Esteban Ocon shouldn’t be one of the drivers in danger of losing a Formula 1 race seat altogether in 2025 and if Kravitz is right and he’s already working hard to move on then he will eventually be picked up.
The driver’s market for the bottom five teams is arguably more competitive than what’s going on during the races at times and will have a big impact on the upcoming seasons.
The regulation changes arriving in 2026 put additional emphasis on getting your line-up right next year.
Ocon appears determined to write another chapter in his F1 story away from Alpine.
The post ‘On the market’: Ted Kravitz believes that £90k-a-week driver is ‘definitely looking’ for new F1 seat in 2025 appeared first on F1 Oversteer.
