Haas’s qualifying this Saturday (28) in Formula 1 was not the most ideal. For the Japanese GP, neither of the two drivers managed to advance to Q3, with Oliver Bearman staying in Q1 and Esteban Ocon not making it past Q2.
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Using two sets of new soft tires, the Briton set a time of 1min30s915 in the first phase of qualifying. With this, he was unable to move up the field and will start only 18th in Suzuka.
“On the first lap, we had a problem with a switch in the car and lost time on the straights. On the second lap, I couldn’t find a rhythm, so I need to understand if there was still a small problem with the car or if it was resolved, but the margins are very tight and it wasn’t enough to get through today. It’s a shame what happened in qualifying, but there will still be many opportunities in the race, I’m optimistic. If it were 12 months ago, I would be much less optimistic, but there will be a lot of overtaking,” he said.
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Meanwhile, Esteban managed to reach Q2 and with a mark of 1min30s309, lines up in 12th place, one position behind Max Verstappen but not enough to place in the top-10. But the driver still showed satisfaction with the result.
“I’m quite satisfied with the work we did. I think our performance throughout the weekend and the way the car behaved on the lap was very positive. The last lap was very solid, there wasn’t much more to improve, but we still have some points to work on. No the whole, I think we did the most we could today, and it’s been a while since that happened, so I’m very happy we managed it. I hope we have a good start tomorrow. The goal is to move forward and reach the points zone.”
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