‘I wanted to buy a WRC car and go shopping with it’

Haas is yet to explore the full potential of its partnership with Toyota – but it has already helped one of its drivers fulfil a childhood dream, as Esteban Ocon got to drive the GR Yaris Rally1 car during the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

“I kept telling them since we went to Japan how I love cars and how I always wanted to test a WRC car,” Ocon told Autosport. “They gave me my first taste of gravel driving on a proper track with a road car GR Yaris in Japan [earlier this year]. And yeah, I think the request came from the boss himself, [Akio] Toyoda.

“And honestly, I can’t thank them enough. I didn’t sleep very much the night before. It was a dream come true, honestly, to drive this car.”

The team initially kept it a secret from Ocon until he saw his schedule for the Goodwood event.

“So, I receive it and I start to look at it, and I see ‘Esteban, WRC’,” he recalls. “So, I called Ayao [Komatsu, the Haas team principal], saying, ‘Ayao, what’s that? Am I driving the WRC?’ And he’s like, ‘No, no, we just made a mistake.’ And then he starts laughing.

“And I’m like, ‘Okay, so what is it then?’ He’s like, ‘No, no, actually, you sit as a co-driver.’ And then he laughs again. So I went through all the stages of emotions. But actually, it turned out that Toyota made me a huge surprise. They wanted me to drive the WRC.

“That was the experience that I’ve always wanted. When I was young, I had a dream to – one day, if I’m successful enough in Formula 1 – buy a WRC car that I can drive every day. And then go to the shop with it! I found out about it later: these cars are road legal, but you have to have a special permit for the competition. But when I was 12, that was my dream.”

The experience “didn’t disappoint” Ocon – not least because he both drove the WRC car and got a passenger ride alongside Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta.

“It was super impressive,” he said. “With some cars, maybe sometimes you test and you’re like, because you drive an F1 car, you’re a bit blase from everything else.

“But this was incredible. How super well engineered it is. It reminded me of the DTM cars. Basically everything is a prototype. Everything is so well thought. The handbrake is super easy, you don’t need to use the clutch. The steering feels super smooth, very easy to use. The throttle is super short in a way that you have to go full throttle straight away. I had a blast.

“Do you know what was the most impressive? Jumping on the side of Takamoto Katsuta. If I drove it only, I would have thought, yeah, the grip is not that great and all of that. But when I jumped on the side of him, I was like, ‘okay, this is something else.'”

Would Ocon consider doing rallies in the future?

“For fun, after my F1 career, definitely,” he says. “But it would never be in a Rally1 class. I think I will probably give them a call to have a test at some point, to have fun. If they let me have the opportunity.

But to trust me to drive these cars on the rally stage, I will be forever grateful to Toyota because it’s awesome.”