Esteban Ocon caught out by his Haas in SQ1 at Miami: "The car wasn't good"

Constantly outmatched by Oliver Bearman during this first day in Miami, Esteban Ocon failed to get out of Q1. Already a discreet sixteenth in Free Practice 1, more than half a second behind the Briton, the Norman will have to settle for eighteenth on the starting grid for the Sprint.

This disappointing result seems to stem from a car with unpredictable behavior. After a month-long truce, Haas A, like most of the field, introduced diffuser upgrades to his VF-26. These changes still seem far from optimized, both for Bearman, who was eliminated in SQ2, and for Esteban Ocon, who is struggling with his car.

« We didn't have a good Free Practice 1 session at all. We couldn't put together a clean lap on either the medium or soft tires this morning. We had deployment issues., explains Esteban Ocon to Canal+ microphones. Sometimes I was going 50 km/h faster into a corner, sometimes slower. During this Sprint qualifying session, the car wasn't right. The balance was outside the optimal range. We need to do better on our end, fix this problem, and do better tomorrow."

Esteban Ocon's lack of confidence in his car proved costly at the end of Q1. While attempting to improve his time on his final run, a wheel lock-up dashed his hopes of advancing to the next lap. Faced with this unpredictable machine, the Frenchman will have no choice but to try and recover during the sprint race at the Miami International Autodrome, scheduled for 18:00 PM (Paris time), before hoping for a more refined setup for Grand Prix qualifying.

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