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On the fact of it, the situation looks rather grim for Esteban Ocon. Having been out-performed by junior team-mate Oliver Bearman over their two seasons together at Haas, the Frenchman has already been told that there will not be a third. His seat has gone to Formula 2 title-contender Rafael Camara, while a contract extension for Bearman is believed to be little more than a formality.
Ocon is keen to continue his Formula One career and he has, of course, come back from the wilderness before. He debuted back in 2016 with Manor and joined Racing Point for the following season, after his first team went bust. He stayed for two years but then spent 2019 on the sidelines as reserve at Mercedes.
That came about because Renault pivoted and signed Daniel Ricciardo instead of him, but he ended up driving alongside the Australian in 2020 and stayed while the team transitioned into Alpine, before he departed and was picked up by Haas for 2025.
Currently without a job for 2027, he finds himself in need of another lifeline. The trouble is, at this point in the season and with the driver market not nearly as in-flux as was predicted at the beginning of the year, race seats are thin on the ground.
The top four teams all have unchanged line-ups, while Williams, Alpine and Aston Martin have all confirmed that their drivers are sticking around too. The latter might have been able to offer Ocon a landing spot, but Fernando Alonso opted against retiring from F1 and so there is no room there.
Audi have made no such official announcements, but their position is that they don't need to. While the official contract lengths of both Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto were never made public, boss Mattia Binotto has already said both have deals to remain in situ for 2027.
Racing Bulls have not yet confirmed their line-up, but that team is a proving ground for Red Bull prospects. Ocon, still affiliated with Mercedes, would not be an option for them, even if they did not already have a three-into-two situation with no room at the inn for F2 title contender Nikola Tsolov, who looks set for a year as reserve to Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad next term.
And so that leaves one other team: Cadillac. F1's newest team has also said publicly it has no plans to make any changes to its driver line-up. But there was also no plan to sack Graeme Lowdon, the man who built the team from the ground up, halfway through its debut season on the grid. Still, it happened.
Plus, with every race weekend that goes by, it is clear that there is a situation that may need some addressing. While the qualifying records of their two drivers are fairly close, Valtteri Bottas seems to be slipping further and further away from Sergio Perez in terms of their respective race pace.
Cadillac are the slowest team on the F1 grid, which is understandable given they are new at this. More difficult to swallow was the fact Bottas was really quite close to being lapped by team-mate Perez in Singapore last weekend. Bottas is no slouch – he's a 10-time Grand Prix winner with bags of experience, so why has his race pace dropped off so alarmingly?
"That's the million dollar question," he replied when posed that question after the Singapore race. "I couldn't find the pace. I don't know, honestly. Throughout, just a big lack of pace. The only thing I could say for now would be the car felt really poor."
It's rarely a good sign when you don't know why things are going wrong. And the longer it goes on, the more clear it becomes that Cadillac have a problem there to solve.
Might they try to do that by making a change? It might be harsh on Bottas, but they now have another experienced F1 driver and race winner to install in the Finn's place if Dan Towriss does decide a change of approach is needed.
If Ocon's F1 career is going to continue without another hiatus, he needs to keep his fingers crossed and hope that is indeed the way Cadillac are thinking.
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