After a strong Sprint in Belgium that saw both Haas cars come home in the points, Esteban Ocon and Ollie Bearman were unable to repeat the feat in Sunday’s Grand Prix at Spa as the former lamented too many “costly mistakes” from the team.
The Frenchman started in P11 – one slot higher than his team mate – and while he might have expected to struggle in the opening stages on the wet track, given he was running a lower downforce set-up than Bearman, his problems instead started as the track dried out.
Firstly, across the three-lap period where the whole field pitted for slick tyres, Ocon was one of the last called in, which cost him plenty of time and a fair few positions.
But worse was to come, when Haas opted to fit his car with a seven-lap old set of used medium tyres.
“I think we got today completely wrong really,” the Frenchman said following the Grand Prix. “We need to put everything together as a team, we had a decent car pace, which we showed later on when it was dry.
“[But] we were on a used set of tyres when we had a new one ready for us at the track. So, that is the first one of the two big mistakes, the other was staying two laps too long on the inter [intermediate tyre].
“We boxed too late on that. Two very costly mistakes that didn’t help our race. 85% of the race I did with an old tyre, which yeah – performance loss for free really.”
Ocon came home in 15th place on a day where many of his midfield rivals scored – Williams, Racing Bulls, Kick Sauber and Alpine all winding up in the points. When asked why the team got it so wrong with the tyres, Ocon simply stated it was a “surprise” and that they would review afterwards.
As for Bearman, he was running a higher downforce set-up that should have paid dividends in the early part of the race on a wet track. But instead of challenging for the points again, he spent much of the Grand Prix managing an engine issue and wound up finishing 11th – for the fourth straight race.
While that was far from ideal, the rookie did find plenty of positives to take from the race – not least the fact that the latest batch of upgrades seem to be doing their job, and making Haas much more competitive.
“I think we were a little bit late with the first stop onto the medium, which put me just out of the points in P11,” Bearman explained of his race.
“Then unfortunately I had an engine issue and lost three positions. So, I was actually ahead of [Pierre] Gasly before that issue and with Nico [Hulkenberg] boxing later, I would have been a net P10. But unfortunately, we had an engine issue, I was actually managing some issues with the power unit for the whole race, so we have to have a look at why.
“But the car felt fantastic, I was just not able to overtake. It really sucked because the car was good. It was a shame to narrowly miss out on points, but we got some yesterday. I think we can be positive heading into Hungary. It’s a track I think will suit us quite well, so fingers crossed.”
Qualifying and one-lap pace has been Haas’ Achilles’ heel this season, but with both cars making SQ3 on Friday, there has been a clear improvement in that area.
“We’ve been strong, we’ve been fast – on both downforce configurations because of course today and yesterday in Quali I had a different one to earlier in the weekend and both times I had the potential to be in Q3, so the car is clearly quick,” Bearman continued.
“We are making a few too many mistakes as a group so we have work to do, but we are going to get there.”
