Ollie Bearman admits that he “lost all level of confidence in the car” during the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend, as he and team mate Esteban Ocon failed to reach the points for Haas.
The American team have been on a tough run of form as neither Bearman nor Ocon has scored points since Monaco fives races ago at the start of June.
The team’s fortunes looked unlikely to change last weekend at the Hungaroring, with Ocon P15 and Bearman P17 on the grid, before the pair ultimately went backwards in the race and finished P16 and P19 respectively.
“It was certainly a very long day as we were probably anticipating. The lack of Qualifying pace was almost exacerbated in race trim. So much sliding and degradation,” said Bearman, who was also handed a five-second penalty for ignoring blue flags.
“On top of that, I couldn’t overtake so I got stuck and didn’t have any pace anyways. We need to understand why Spa was so good and why this weekend has been so bad because the feeling has been completely the opposite. I lost all level of confidence in the car.
“I haven’t done a lap this weekend and felt good in the car. We think we understand why but we have to look long and hard through things over the summer break.”
Haas are expected to bring an upgrade at some point after the summer break, with the team having slipped down the pecking order after Bearman finished in the points three times across the opening five Grands Prix.
Ocon admitted more performance was needed, despite a stronger weekend for himself where he was able to find greater consistency.
“We need to look at putting more performance on the car. We need to look at the next upgrades on the car and hope that they will make a difference,” he said.
“Obviously the team will be on it and there’s a lot of positives to take away from this weekend on my side.
“Quite happy that we managed to extract the maximum out of the car and we got the consistency from Friday to Saturday to Sunday. Now we obviously need more performance.”
