Ending the first day of practice of the Saudi Arabian GP at the tail end of the pack, Haas is left searching for improvements heading into the race weekend. Returning from a strong double points performance in Bahrain, both Haas drivers Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon hope to gain more confidence in the car and find pace ahead of qualifying.
A tough session for Oliver Bearman
Returning to the track which put him on everyone’s radar last year, Oliver Bearman is cautiously hopeful ahead of the first day of practice sessions in Jeddah. After finishing P7 in the Ferrari at the 2024 Saudi Arabian GP in the first F1 race of his career, the young British driver has hopes to use his experience and extract more from the Haas and get in the mix this weekend.
Speaking in his post FP2 interview, Bearman reflected on his strong progression over the year, and the positives of being in a full-time seat this time around.
“I’m very happy to be back and if I look back at myself from one year ago I feel like an absolute idiot… but no I’m really happy with you know looking back seeing how far I’ve developed and really enjoying driving on this track as normal and hopefully we can have a good qualifying.”
However, after a sour end to FP1, Bearman expressed his lack of confidence in the car and his initial braking struggles here in Jeddah.
“Yeah, FP1 was difficult… just lacking confidence on the brakes, I had a few lock-ups and car moving left and right in the braking which is really difficult to predict.”
After making a couple adjustments for FP2, Bearman found some improvements, but remained somewhat tentative around the car performance.
“We made a change for FP2, we put back the brakes from a race where they worked very well and it was the case again, brakes were much better today in the afternoon so I’m happy with that. On the other hand we suffered a little bit in performance runs in FP2, missing a little bit especially jumping onto the soft tyres so definitely a bit of work to do for tomorrow.”
While weary of his struggles on the soft tire, Bearman is hopeful to find form with the VF-25 and put his best foot forward for the Saudi Arabian GP.
“It’s really tight, really really tight, so I think if we put everything together we can be in the mix, I hope that’s the case, we just have a few things to fine-tune. I had a bit of bouncing which is always difficult and no fun, so I think if we can get on top of that we can extract a little bit more from the car, so let’s see how tomorrow goes.”
Similar woes for Esteban Ocon
Finishing both practice sessions in P19, Ocon admits he is fighting to find confidence in the Haas and his overall lack of feel for the car.
“It’s a tough track, you need as much confidence as you can from every corner, so you need to feel one with the car and that’s what we’re going to be working on tonight.”
Conveying similar struggles to his teammate, he voiced the need to work on improving the car for the weekend, however, he remains hopeful of finding more pace going into qualifying.
“It hasn’t been the easiest day, but as usual on Friday we gather data, we try and improve things and the importance is going to be tomorrow. So we’ll do everything we can to pull it together tomorrow and hopefully have a bit more pace from us.”
