Haas had a consistent performance in the Sprint race of the Formula 1 Chinese GP, scoring points and showing good potential for Sunday’s GP.
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Oliver Bearman finished the Sprint in 8th place, despite the intense degradation of the medium tires: “There was crazy degradation on the medium tire in the Sprint race, and honestly, when the safety car came out, I thought it was over. Two or three drivers using hard tires were absolutely flying, but I managed to recover some grip and pace and, after the restart, I held on well, finishing in P8. I am very happy to bring another point to the team and now we will focus on the afternoon race,” said the young Briton.
In the qualifying session, Bearman reached Q3, but was unable to improve his time enough to move up: “I’m happy with the qualifying session, we had good pace. In the end, we couldn’t take that final step in Q3. The more I reached the limit and the car improved in grip and balance, I struggled to extract the maximum. It’s encouraging to be in Q3 and I’m excited for the race tomorrow. As a team, we want to continue scoring points,” he concluded.
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Esteban Ocon also had a positive Sprint race, recovering positions despite losing out to Max Verstappen due to a different strategy under the safety car: “Overall, it was a very positive Sprint. My tires degraded much less than those of other cars, but the starting position didn’t help. In the qualifying session, we had a yellow flag on the last lap, so we couldn’t improve the time, which hurt us a lot. There is still a lot to explore in the car, but I hope we can move through the field as we did in the Sprint,” he added.
Team principal Ayao Komatsu highlighted the team’s performance and goals for the race: “In the Sprint, it was very good to finish in the top 8. We raced well, and although the hard tire clearly proved to be better than the medium, we only lost to Lawson. In the qualifying session, we focused on operating cleanly, which we achieved. Esteban was unlucky with the yellow flag in Q2, and Oliver had the potential to beat both Red Bulls in Q3. Tomorrow, our goal is to put both drivers in the top 10, and I believe we have the speed and capability for that,” Komatsu concluded.
