Haas was sent crashing back down to earth in qualifying for the 2025 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix which left Ollie Bearman ruing a seemingly easy choice and Esteban Ocon hoping for respite after his wreck.
Bearman qualified last and made an unusual admission on Saturday night at Sakhir.
The rookie gave up first practice in Bahrain for Haas’s new reserve driver Ryo Hirakawa. This seemed a simple decision for Haas. F1 teams tested there in February which meant they’d gathered plenty of data, so five other teams also elected to put a rookie in for FP1.
Yet Bearman admitted that he’d actually made the choice to give up FP1 in Bahrain - and that it ended up being a mistake not to take part in the first hour of practice.
“It was messy and I’ve been struggling a bit to find confidence all weekend, plagued by a few issues with front locking,” he explained. “And I was just really struggling to then push the car’s limits.
“That was just my issue that I’ve had and of course missing FP1 doesn’t help. I can’t quantify how much that changes, but missing laps, it probably wasn’t the best decision from my side to skip FP1. I can choose which tracks I skip and I picked Bahrain since I tested here.”
First practice took place in sweltering temperatures which exacerbated the tyre wear that drivers faced on this coarse Sakhir surface - so much so that Pirelli made the unusual decision to lower tyre pressures after Friday’s running - yet Bearman pointed out why the first session was still an important one.
“When you only do two or three meaningful laps in a session because the degradation is so high, actually, by missing FP1 you miss two or three very crucial laps in finding rhythm and speed. That’s not the reason I’m standing here now but it definitely doesn’t help,” he said on Saturday night.
The British driver added that he showed signs of pace in FP2 on Friday evening - when he finished ninth - but the front lockups got worse and worse as he tried to extract single lap pace.
He finished 16th in FP3 before bowing out last in qualifying.
Ocon hopes gearbox is fine after huge crash
Ocon caused the sole red flag of qualifying when he crashed in Q2, causing him to qualify a provisional 14th ahead of Williams’s Alex Albon.
The Frenchman lost control of the car over the kerbs into Turn 2 and smashed into the barriers. The rear of his Haas was left destroyed as it took the impact.
🚩 RED FLAG 🚩
— Formula 1 (@F1) April 12, 2025
Ocon into the barriers
Esteban has radioed to say he is okay#F1 #BahrainGP pic.twitter.com/ou4h8T86w2
He apologised to Haas and said the car had bottomed out after he went over those kerbs - but said there were inklings of pace within the VF-25 that gave the team “something to play”.
“It’s my fault; we’ve worked super hard these last two weeks to try and improve the car and we were going for a decent qualifying I think.”
The team was banking on saving a new set of tyres for Q3 but Ocon dashed its hopes with that accident - but the team might be able to use that to its advantage on Sunday, when tyre degradation could again prove excessive.
“I have many new [sets of tyres for Sunday], so that’s a good thing,” he said. Our degradation doesn’t seem too bad which is a good thing. But yeah we need to take a good start, have good pitstops… and reset.”
Of course, there could be a sting in the tail for Ocon.
That damaged rear could mean a damaged gearbox. On Sunday, he could end up having to start down the order with Bearman - ending this impressive two-race streak of points for the team.
