The primary Grand Prix of the 2025 Method 1 season is simply hours away, with the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne.
However you shouldn’t fault rookie Oliver Bearman for desirous to “transfer on” to the second race of the season, the Chinese language Grand Prix.
Bearman’s first season as a full-time driver on the F1 grid has gotten off to a troublesome begin, marred by two incidents and a gearbox failure. A tough shunt throughout the first observe session on Friday not solely ended his FP1, however value him the complete second observe session because the crew labored to restore the harm to his VF-25. The Haas driver, unsurprisingly, was out first on the monitor throughout Saturday’s third observe session to make up for the misplaced time, however shortly discovered the gravel, bringing one other observe session for him to an early finish.
Then got here qualifying which additionally ended early for him, as a difficulty with the gearbox on his VF-25 noticed him retire earlier than setting a time in Q1.
Within the crew’s post-qualifying report, Bearman described his weekend as “messy.”
“It’s disappointing to not get a lap on the board but it surely’s been a messy weekend to date,” mentioned Bearman. “I feel tomorrow can be fascinating, after which we will transfer on. As a crew we’ve struggled a bit of bit and naturally I haven’t run all weekend, and that’s made it robust for the crew to know as they’ve been solely operating one automobile, so I can solely apologize to the crew.”
Issues weren’t a lot better on the opposite facet of the storage. Whereas Esteban Ocon was capable of full his run in qualifying, he didn’t advance out of Q1, and can begin in P19 on Sunday, alongside Bearman within the again row.
The veteran driver admitted he was stunned at Haas’ standing within the pecking order to start the 12 months.
“It’s been troublesome, a little bit of a shock to be sincere in comparison with the place we seemed in testing. Traditionally, it’s been a troublesome monitor for the crew, however we didn’t count on to be this far again,” mentioned Ocon. “We’ve made steps in every session which is encouraging, however we clearly want extra. Tomorrow, we’ll go once more and attempt to get the utmost out of the chance with rain forecast.”
As famous there may be rain within the forecast on Sunday, which may give Haas an opportunity to salvage one thing from the weekend. Ocon delivered one of many extra memorable outcomes final season within the rain, ending second in a rain-soaked São Paulo Grand Prix.
Nonetheless, Haas Workforce Principal Ayao Komatsu famous that the rain may “assist,” but when circumstances stay dry the tempo merely will not be there proper now.
“One other troublesome day with the efficiency situation we had yesterday,” described Komatsu. “We labored as a lot as potential to enhance the automobile, which we did, however in the end it wasn’t adequate.
We’re missing so much in high-speed corners, and we didn’t see that coming from Bahrain testing, however that is the fact presently and we have to discover a answer as shortly as potential.
“It’s in fact going to be useful if it’s raining as a result of if it’s dry, we merely don’t have tempo,” added the Haas boss. “With our understanding of the problem, a moist race could assist, however we’ll put every part into it tomorrow – we received’t surrender.”
