Oliver Bearman’s crash in the first practice session was especially unfortunate for Haas as their car did not live up to the team’s expectations in Australia.
The rookie spun into a barrier at turn 10 after just a dozen laps in the first practice session. The team’s mechanics worked quickly to repair the car for the second practice session, which began two-and-a-half hours after the first ended, but narrowly failed to do so.
“I’m a bit sad to have missed all the running today,” Bearman admitted afterwards. “The guys did a great job to try and get the car back out, we just ran out of time.
“I just had a small mistake in turn 10, which put me a bit wide, and out there, it’s very, very bumpy and I unfortunately lost the car.”
Bearman said that prior to his crash he “really felt confident in the car – maybe too much.”
Haas was rooted to the bottom of the times in both sessions. Esteban Ocon’s best lap of 1’18.034 was six tenths of a second off the next team.
“Today was a pretty difficult day,” team principal Ayao Komatsu admitted afterwards. “It wasn’t the performance we were expecting.
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“We have one indication as to why in FP1, but Ollie crashed so we couldn’t completely get to the bottom of why we were uncompetitive, so we need to make another step tonight and then do the best we can tomorrow.”
Ocon said “it hasn’t been the smoothest day” for the team. “Obviously it’s the first day of the year so it is normal that it goes that way, but we still have more to put together to try and get correct, to try and exploit the maximum out of the car.
“I was still not happy with the balance and how the car felt. We did a step between P1 and P2, but we need more.”
However he believes the route the team need to take with its car tomorrow “is clear for us.”
“We need to try and do that of course and hopefully we can do that in [final practice] and then build on from there,” he said.
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2025 Australian Grand Prix
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