The primary Grand Prix of the 2025 Formulation 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 apply session on Friday not solely ended his FP1, however price him all the second apply session because the workforce labored to restore the harm 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 problem with the gearbox on his VF-25 noticed him retire earlier than setting a time in Q1.
Within the workforce’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 date,” stated Bearman. “I believe tomorrow will probably be attention-grabbing, after which we will transfer on. As a workforce we’ve struggled slightly bit and naturally I haven’t run all weekend, and that’s made it robust for the workforce to grasp as they’ve been solely operating one automobile, so I can solely apologize to the workforce.”
Issues weren’t a lot better on the opposite aspect of the storage. Whereas Esteban Ocon was in a position to 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 yr.
“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 workforce, however we didn’t count on to be this far again,” stated 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 might 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 Group Principal Ayao Komatsu famous that the rain would possibly “assist,” but when circumstances stay dry the tempo merely shouldn’t be there proper now.
“One other troublesome day with the efficiency difficulty we had yesterday,” described Komatsu. “We labored as a lot as doable to enhance the automobile, which we did, however finally it wasn’t adequate.
We’re missing rather a lot in high-speed corners, and we didn’t see that coming from Bahrain testing, however that is the truth presently and we have to discover a resolution as rapidly as doable.
“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 might assist, however we’ll put the whole lot into it tomorrow – we gained’t quit.”
