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 eager 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 through the first apply session on Friday not solely ended his FP1, however price him the complete second apply session because the crew labored to restore the injury to his VF-25. The Haas driver, unsurprisingly, was out first on the monitor throughout Saturday’s third apply session to make up for the misplaced time, however rapidly discovered the gravel, bringing one other apply 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 however it’s been a messy weekend to this point,” mentioned Bearman. “I believe tomorrow might be attention-grabbing, after which we will transfer on. As a crew we’ve struggled slightly 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 significantly better on the opposite aspect 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 shocked 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 appeared 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’s 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 Staff Principal Ayao Komatsu famous that the rain may “assist,” but when circumstances stay dry the tempo merely just isn’t there proper now.
“One other troublesome day with the efficiency problem we had yesterday,” described Komatsu. “We labored as a lot as attainable to enhance the automobile, which we did, however finally it wasn’t ok.
We’re missing quite a bit in high-speed corners, and we didn’t see that coming from Bahrain testing, however that is the truth at the moment and we have to discover a resolution as rapidly as attainable.
“It’s after all 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 difficulty, a moist race could assist, however we’ll put all the things into it tomorrow – we gained’t quit.”