Esteban Ocon was already confirmed not to be driving for Haas in 2027; little did we know he would not even make it to Sunday's Mexican Grand Prix.

Two sessions into the weekend, Haas made the shock announcement on Saturday morning that the Frenchman would not be taking any further part in Mexico City.

In his place, Haas reserve driver Ryo Hirakawa, who was also one of 10 F1 rookies to take part in FP1 on Friday, will be in the car.

"TGR Haas F1 Team reserve driver Ryo Hirakawa will replace Esteban Ocon for the remainder of the weekend’s Mexico City Grand Prix, Saturday 31 October - Sunday 1 November," an official team statement confirmed.

Haas did not provide a reason for this change in their statement, but later confirmed that Ocon had not been replaced due to illness.

Did tense radio exchange trigger Esteban Ocon axe?

Naturally, this has left many to speculate what could have gone wrong between the end of FP2 and the start of Saturday's qualifying action.

One theory revolves around a tense radio exchange between Ocon and his race engineer Laura Muller during Friday's FP2 session.

"We've swapped the high fuel run to medium because Ollie's [Bearman] appearance is not great," Muller told Ocon during FP2.

The Frenchman responded: "I'm still doing soft, right?"

"No," Muller replied. "We have to do medium."

This appeared to frustrate Ocon a lot: No, no! I want to do soft, like, don't do that to me. Come on."

As he returned to the garage, Ocon continued to show his displeasure over the radio, adding: "It is my turn this weekend, come on."

Of course, we can not say for sure if this played a role, or what discussions were held afterwards, but it does suggest that there was tension in the air on Friday evening.

Sergio Rodriguez claims that a 'big discussion' happened after the session, while Kunal Shah reports that Ocon 'threw his gloves on the table' in Haas' hospitality suite after the session.

There is no word yet from Haas on whether Ocon will be back in the car for next weekend's Brazilian Grand Prix.