Oliver Bearman ended Friday in Monza excited about the progress shown by Haas. The Briton stated that the team had its best start to a Formula 1 weekend since March or April, driven by the new update package.
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Bearman highlighted that the car’s behavior changed significantly and praised the team’s work to turn the update into performance: “The feeling with the car is night and day different, we took a very, very big step in this regard,” said the driver, who also acknowledged having a good track position and a favorable slipstream.
Esteban Ocon had a more cautious assessment after experiencing the characteristics of the new 2026 regulations on the Italian circuit. The Frenchman acknowledged that there are still areas where Haas needs to find performance, in addition to having faced some problems during the day: “It wasn’t the smoothest day, but I hope we have enough data for tomorrow,” he said.
Ayao Komatsu, team principal, considered Friday especially important because of the introduction of the new package. According to him, the update is delivering exactly the characteristics Haas was looking for and represents confirmation that the direction taken in development was correct.
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However, the manager drew attention to the difference between Bearman’s and Ocon’s cars. Komatsu stated that Ocon’s result does not represent his potential, as the team identified inconsistencies and lack of performance in his car, without being able to completely solve the problem in FP2.
“If Ollie can do that and we can get Esteban up there, we can fight near the points. That is our goal for tonight,” Komatsu said, indicating that the priority now is to understand Ocon’s performance loss and take advantage of the progress shown by the update.
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