Inside the Cockpit: Laura Mueller and Esteban Ocon

This week’s Beyond The Grid features Haas driver Esteban Ocon and his race engineer, Laura Mueller, in a wide-ranging conversation with host Tom Clarkson.

Both are navigating milestones in 2025: Laura’s debut year as a race engineer, Esteban’s first season at Haas, and the opening of a new working relationship between them. They talk candidly about how their partnership is evolving, what each needs to extract peak performance, and the habits they’ve developed to stay in sync on race weekends.

A large part of the episode breaks down the race engineer–driver dynamic: how radio exchanges are planned, when to speak and when to stay quiet, how message frequency shifts depending on the lap and race situation, and how clear communication helps manage strategy and stress. They also revisit the emotional arc of the season so far — bouncing back from a difficult start in Melbourne to securing points in China the next week — and the lessons that came from those contrasting weekends.

Laura recounts her path into Formula 1 and reflects on becoming the sport’s first female race engineer, including the early influences and the childhood hero who inspired her pursuit of motorsport engineering.