A frustrating race for both Haas F1 drivers, Esteban Ocon and Ollie Bearman, during the Belgian GP. Ocon got away on the wrong setup for the conditions, as he prepared his car for more top speed, whereas Bearman dropped three places due to an engine mishap. This eventually led to both drivers finishing outside of the points, with a 15th and 11th place respectively.
Wrong tyres adds insult to injury for Ocon
“Yeah, frustrating,” Ocon starts his analysis. “I think there are two very crucial decisions that we didn’t do in the right way. We need to review as a team because we had the pace today to score with both cars. Once we got going and everything was normal, the pace was there.
“It’s a big shame. The first one, obviously, yes, was boxing two laps too late. We need to review these last two races because I feel when it’s wet we don’t put things together.
“And then the other thing was boxing onto a used set of tyres while we had a new one in the truck ready for us. So I did basically my 35 laps on a used set of tyres while we had a new set of medium ready for us in the race. That’s a big and costly mistake.”
The Frenchman didn’t think he did anything wrong in terms of feedback to the team, but admitted everything will be scrutinised to improve in the future.
“We will review everything,” he explained. “If I need to give more information, I will in the future.
“But they have a very clear process on who takes decisions for what into the team. I believe that I did what I needed to do. But again, it’s all together that we messed up and we will do everything we need for that not to happen.”
Starting ahead of his teammate Bearman, courtesy of his low-drag setup, Ocon quickly had to let the young Briton by.
“I let him go, to be honest. Before Turn 5, the team didn’t ask me to let him go. But I was holding him up in the middle sector quite a lot and I was damaging my tyres much more.
“So I let him go just before Turn 5, I pulled on the inside and then he did his race. But the team boxed him one lap too late and they boxed me two laps too late in that sense. So we should have both been on the earlier side basically.
“If we would have done that, I think today would have been a different story.”
When asked about the delayed start of the Belgian GP Ocon was in favour of the FIA’s decision.
“The FIA did a really good job in that sense, taking care of us,” he said. “I think they did the right thing in starting when it was the right time.”
Engine woes drop Bearman out of the points
Bearman’s review of the Belgian GP began with the same sentiment as teammate Ocon’s.
“Yeah, incredibly frustrating,” the 20 year old said. “I think the main frustration, you know, we did box a lap too late from the inter to the slick and got undercut by a few guys, but it happens. It’s one of those where it’s really difficult to judge.”
Bearman admitted he didn’t was too concerned with the pitstop timing, as his engine was having issues at that time.
“Honestly, from my side, I didn’t really give much feedback also on the track because I was nursing a problem with the engine and more focused on that because I was struggling with my battery charge and everything.
“Then after the stops, I was net P10 just behind Hülkenberg and then coming out of the last corner, I had no power.
“The engine went to limbo,” he explained. “Then I lost three spots to [Pierre] Gasly, to [Fernando] Alonso, to Yuki [Tsunoda] as well. Then I spent the whole race just pissed off and trying to catch it back, but it’s impossible to overtake there.”
