Jack Doohan misses comeback chance after Haas opted for Ferrari young gun Rafael Camara in Brazil, Esteban Ocon sacked, driver market update, silly season, Valtteri Bottas, Liam Lawson

Haas has sacked Esteban Ocon and will replace him at this weekend’s São Paulo Grand Prix with Formula 2 points leader Rafael Câmara.

The move almost certainly closes the door on Aussie Jack Doohan getting onto the grid this season in another setback for his Formula 1 comeback bid.

Ocon was axed halfway through the weekend’s Mexico City Grand Prix and replaced with reserve driver Ryō Hirakawa, who scored points on debut with a 10th-place finish.

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Toyota-backed Hirakawa, however, races full-time in the World Endurance Championship, which is in action in Italy this weekend for its season-closing round.

Hirakawa and his teammates are leading the standings, and the Japanese sports car ace is favourite to clinch his third world title.

The conflicting program left Haas to decide between promoting Câmara, the Ferrari junior who is already signed to replace Ocon next season, and reserve driver Doohan, who has spent most of this year sidelined bar four starts in the European Le Mans Series and an LMP2 entry at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

On Sunday night in Mexico, Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur said he hadn’t yet been contacted about the possibility of releasing Câmara from his contract to race at Haas but that the decision was up to his counterpart, Ayao Komatsu, at the American-owned team.

Putting Câmara into the car for his home race in Brazil was figured by some to be too high-pressure a situation that could affect the trajectory of his career. Doohan, who has racked up miles in the team simulator and in old cars, might have presented as a lower-stakes choice.

But the Australian lacked the upside of being the team’s full-time 2027 driver. Giving Câmara racing miles this season gives him a better chance of hitting the ground running next year.

A secondary complication is that the F1 regulations say that teams can enter up to four drivers per season. With Hirakawa being the third Haas driver for the year after his start in Mexico, choosing Doohan or Câmara would exclude the other from being selected for the rest of the season without seeking an exemption from the governing body.

This may have initially been to Doohan’s benefit given Câmara is still racing for the Formula 2 championship, which has two rounds still to run, in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

However, Hirakawa’s strong performance in Mexico despite his last-minute confirmation has opened the door to the Japanese driver potentially competing again later this season as a safe pair of hands to allow Câmara to complete his F2 title bid.

Hirakawa has competed in Qatar before in the World Endurance Championship and has completed two Formula 1 practice sessions in Abu Dhabi.

Câmara therefore emerged as the logical option given his 2027 contract and the flexibility the team has with Hirakawa.

“Having excelled in his TPC outing in August, we know Rafa’s capabilities and we’re looking forward to welcoming him into the team this weekend and working with him through his Formula 1 debut driving the VF-26 in Brazil,” team boss Komatsu said.

Haas notably confirmed him for only this weekend. The team has reportedly not yet decided who will compete at the following round in Las Vegas — or whether Câmara will complete the Formula 2 season.

OCON FUTURE IN DOUBT AFTER SACKING

Komatsu confirmed that Ocon was sacked following an altercation on Friday night in Mexico, though he refused to go into detail about the incident that abruptly ended the Frenchman’s season and potentially his Formula 1 career.

“Such decisions are never made lightly, as was the case in Mexico City — but then, as now, we feel this is firmly in the best interest of the team moving forward.

“The conversations that ultimately unfolded between the team and Esteban remain an internal matter, and we will continue to respect the private nature of closed-door situations.”

A report from French paper L’Équipe implied that the dispute may have become physical, precipitating the extreme and highly unusual action of taking a driver out of the car part of the way through the weekend.

Ocon took to social media on Saturday to deny the argument had become violent.

The sacking is the culmination of what reports suggest was an increasingly tense atmosphere at Haas since Ocon was told he would not be retained for 2027.

The 198-start veteran has been adamant that he didn’t deserve to be axed and that he remains sufficiently competitive to remain in Formula 1.

He has railed against the Haas car for blowing out his deficit to teammate Oliver Bearman, who has comfortably beaten him in just his second Formula 1 season.

Though Haas has been open about car inconsistencies that have made a straight comparison between the two drivers difficult, reports suggest management was growing frustrated by Ocon taking insufficient responsibility for his own performances and instead deflecting his shortcomings onto the team.

Ocon has said he will not race elsewhere next year in a bid to keep his Formula 1 dream alive. He has been most closely linked to a reserve role at Aston Martin, which could put him in the frame for a drive in 2028 should Fernando Alonso call it quits at the end of next season.

But the nature of Ocon’s split with Haas could complicate his 2027 plans.

It’s the second time he’s been dropped by a team before the end of a season, having missed the season-ending 2024 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in his last year with Alpine — albeit that was part of a deal that allowed him to start his Haas career early.

Ocon has developed a reputation as a prickly operator within a team and particularly with his teammates, though his relationship with Bearman appears to have survived unscathed.

Speaking to Sky Sports, 2009 world champion Jenson Button said his history could jeopardise any hopes of his career continuing.

“Who’s going to want to pick him up if he’s not willing to be a team player?” he said “And he’s proven that probably he’s not that team player right now.”

“I think the speed is there with Esteban, that’s the thing, but it’s out of the car that he’s let himself down.”

Though he added: “We don’t know the full story, so it’s a little bit unfair of me to say that.”

RIGHT PLACE, WRONG TIME: UNLUCKY DOOHAN MISSES OUT AGAIN

The unexpected late-season Haas driver shuffle so nearly could have been Doohan’s route back onto the grid but for a bit of good fortune.

Hirakawa was chosen to replace Ocon in Mexico because he was on site to partake in FP1 to satisfy the regulatory requirement that every team run a rookie driver in at least four practice sessions through the season.

Doohan’s seven starts for Alpine exclude him from satisfying this rule, which is why he hasn’t been deployed as a practice driver this season.

Had Ocon been dropped on almost any other weekend — this weekend, for example, when Hirakawa will be racing in WEC — the Queenslander would have got the nod, and given he isn’t currently competing elsewhere, he likely would have been locked in for the rest of the season.

It’s the latest bout of misfortune that has likely ended his Formula 1 dream without him getting a fair crack at making it a success.

His final Formula 2 season could have delivered him a championship had his team listened to his feedback that the car was broken. Instead he finished third.

He sidelined himself in 2024 at Alpine’s request to be ready for a 2025 call-up, which came at the final round of 2024 to replace Ocon.

But in the off-season Alpine signed Franco Colapinto on loan from Williams with the apparent intention of putting him in the car sometime the following season.

Doohan’s rookie season started under that cloud, making it difficult for him to build momentum. He was turfed after six rounds, and though the team dangled the carrot of a possible return, particularly as Colapinto struggled, he was ultimately shut out of the grid.

He left Alpine for the Haas reserve role this season, correctly predicting that the American-owned team would likely have a seat available in 2027. Unfortunately the move coincided with Câmara’s rise, and the Ferrari-backed Brazilian star pipped him at the post in a shootout for the drive.

Bad timing has now deprived him of what could have been an important 2026 cameo given the power of grand prix time in influencing the driver market.

WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF THE DRIVER MARKET?

Ocon’s 2026 replacement is a sideshow in the context of the 2027 driver market given his seat had already been signed away to Câmara for next year.

But the Mexico City weekend also highlighted the last two questions still to be answered in the silly season.

Racing Bulls has yet to confirm both Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad for 2027, and the team fielded junior driver and F2 title contender Nikola Tsolov in Lawson’s car in FP1.

Tsolov had been tipped to replace Lawson for 2027 earlier in the year when he looked like he was sprinting to the F2 title, but his form has faded recently, while Lawson has found another gear in his first full-time campaign with one team.

Lawson is comfortably the best performing midfield driver this year, with almost double the score of the next-best driver in the standings, and he has opened the gap between himself and Lindblad in points and pace in the second half of the season.

He also acquitted himself well in his three-race cameo with Red Bull Racing.

His Mexico weekend started with a potentially damaging crash with Max Verstappen in FP2 that in other years might have cost him the drive on the spot, but an outstanding recovery drive from a disqualified 22nd to seventh, single-handedly making Racing Bulls the highest scoring midfield team of the round, demonstrated once again his level of performance this year.

“If Liam Lawson gets sacked from the seat, it’ll be one of the most unjust sackings in F1, because he’s done a fantastic job this season,” Karun Chandhok told Sky Sports at the weekend.

The other live seat belongs to Valtteri Bottas.

Despite Bottas holding a contract with Cadillac next year, the team is now open about the fact it is considering cancelling it to hire someone else alongside Sergio Pérez, who was confirmed until the end of 2029 last week.

Bottas has been the weaker performer at Cadillac, though the car’s chronic inconsistency and unreliability has muddied the comparison — Bottas’s alarming suspension failure during the Mexico City Grand Prix being an obvious example.

But American-owned Cadillac appears intent on giving American development driver Colton Herta a chance to earn the drive.

He will be given an unusual sixth FP1 outing this weekend, which will earn him the superlicence required to compete in Formula 1.

Herta left IndyCar last year to race in Formula 2 this year as preparation for his F1 bid. Though his results in the feeder series have been underwhelming, the team puts more stock in his work in the simulator, in private testing and in the practice sessions.

Mercedes reserve driver Frederik Vesti is also reportedly in the frame, the Dane having admitted in Mexico that he is working hard to make a case for himself.

Vesti competes for Cadillac in the American IMSA SportsCar Championship, where he’s a multiple race winner in the top class.