It was a tough first weekend for the young drivers in Australia. Oliver Bearman crashed during FP1 and destroyed his car, which deprived him of driving in FP2, valuable experience given that there had been very little testing. The young British driver repeated this during the third free practice session by ending up in the gravel trap in the first minutes of the session, preventing him from driving once again. In qualifying, the remnants of his setbacks were felt and the #87 was once again struck by bad luck. His gearbox did not allow him to change gears, he had to return to the pits and abandon the session once again. The Chelmsford native was forced to start from the pit lane during the race.
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Objective: finish the race
However, despite a disastrous start to the weekend, Oliver Bearman was one of only two novices to finish the race, along with Andrea Kimi Antonelli. This was not the result the Briton had hoped for. who would have preferred to collect a few points, but with which he is quite happy. “Finishing the race was the goal today in addition to collecting data, he explained during post-race interviews. I'm pretty happy with my performance, I think I executed it well." Indeed, the contract was fulfilled: to complete the 57 laps of the Albert Park circuit and bring the entire car back to the pits, even though he had only been able to complete a dozen laps since the start of this first meeting of the year.
Tough conditions, but both cars finished with plenty of valuable data gathered! 👊🇦🇺
We move onto China together 🤜🤛# HaasF1 #F1 #AusGP pic.twitter.com/fjy9j663u9
—MoneyGram Haas F1 Team (@HaasF1Team) March 16, 2025
Where have the Haas of Bahrain gone?
This isn't quite the result Haas was hoping for in this first round of the year. The team led by Ayao Komatsu had shown good momentum during the pre-season tests in Bahrain, accompanied by a restructuring of the team. Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon could not hide their enthusiasm for the progress of the American team during the winter. Hopes were ultimately not fully realized since the Haas finished thirteenth and fourteenth... That is, last in the classification of cars still on the track. "There were times when we lost time while we were fighting for points." analyzed the little protégé of Ferrari.
Towards a new start in China?
Needless to say, mistakes, however bitter, are often very useful in understanding and learning from what went wrong. It's a surprise to all of us not to be in the points, confided Esteban Ocon's new garage neighbor. Of course I'm disappointed, but we'll work hard to try to improve things." There is still so much for Bearman to learn: “I haven't done a lap on dry ground yet, so I can't give any feedback on how the car is behaving and reacting, I only have Esteban's vision, he said. China will be a good way to restart and see where we really stand.” Join us from Friday, March 21st to follow the developments at Haas and the rest of the grid.
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Yves-Henri RANDIER
16/03/2025 at 05:16 a.m.
Despite not getting points, he finished the GP without breaking his car like in the tests!