Esteban Ocon Ditches F1’s New Cooling Gear

Esteban Ocon’s giving Formula 1’s new cooling vest a hard pass for 2025’s heat waves.

The FIA pushed to mandate the tech this year for driver health, but after team pushback, it’s optional ‘til 2026. Haas’s tall Frenchman isn’t sold. “You have tubes everywhere, which is fine,” Ocon said. “On the back too, which is also fine. But there’s like a huge tennis ball on your hip. If you have it here on the chest, it hurts because of the belts. And if you do it on the back, you don’t fit in your seat anymore.”

He’s not alone—others echo the gripes. “At the moment it doesn’t work,” he added. “It’s good that they found a solution and came up with something, but at the moment neither me nor Ollie (Bearman) can use it. It’s too big. You know how tight the seat is in Formula 1.”

Opting out means adding 500 grams of ballast in scorching races.

“It’s not really necessary,” Ocon said. “Maybe sometimes, yes. I don’t know if there is any discussion about it, but I assume that nobody is in a position to use it at the moment. It’s not that I’m a diva and don’t want to – quite the opposite. It just doesn’t fit.”