When Haas drivers take each other out: Team boss Ayao Komatsu on the events surrounding Bearman and Ocon at Silverstone
According to team boss Ayao Komatsu, Formula 1 team Haas had a “terrible race” at Silverstone, finishing eleventh and thirteenth and failing to score any World Championship points. The low point was a collision between the two Haas drivers Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon, which sent both of them spinning off the track.
Komatsu said: “Our drivers must not touch each other. That’s the last thing that should happen.”
Nevertheless, it happened, but the Haas drivers do not have to fear any consequences. Komatsu watched the onboard footage of both drivers and spoke to them. His verdict: “For me, it was a racing accident.”
This was also the conclusion reached by the FIA stewards who investigated the incident. Their conclusion: “Neither driver was primarily at fault for the contact. We agree with the drivers when they say that it was an unfortunate racing incident.” On a drying track, there was simply not enough room to maneuver before turn 6.
Komatsu: The mistake happened before
Komatsu accepts that. What he does not accept, however, is “how the drivers got into this situation in the first place,” he says. Bearman only slipped behind his teammate Ocon due to a driving error after the latter returned to the track from the pit stop.
“Ollie then had hotter tires than Esteban and we wanted to overtake, but we shouldn’t have been in that situation in the first place. That simply cannot happen,” said Komatsu.
“Normally, when they are going at different speeds or have different strategies, we just swap them around. They are absolute team players, they don’t argue and they do it immediately.“
This time there was contact, but both cars were able to continue. Nevertheless, Komatsu warns his drivers: ”We will make sure that something like this doesn’t happen again.“
Bearman experiences ”chaotic” race
Bearman describes the scene in retrospect as “chaotic” because he already had “very warm tires,” but “everyone else had much cooler tires. That gave me significantly more grip.” And he wanted to take advantage of that grip. “But it was just chaos,” said the Haas driver.
Looking back, Bearman also regrets his tire choice: “Switching to slicks early was probably not the right decision. It seemed like the right thing to do because the track was dry in many places, but it was wet in Turn 1 and in the last chicane, and that cost me and everyone else on slicks a lot of time in the first few laps.”
Finishing eleventh was therefore “a real shame,” says Bearman. “Because our car was really fast.”
Ocon pushes frustration in the race
Ocon draws a completely different conclusion. He had a “frustrating race” in which only the start went “well.” “Then we completely collapsed,” said Ocon. “We need to look into that because so much happened. The race wasn’t easy and it wasn’t fun in the car.”
Unlike Bearman, he struggled with a Haas VF-25 that was “very difficult” to drive. “The whole race was just about staying on the track. So it wasn’t fun.”
Ocon therefore sees the Grand Prix in Silverstone primarily as a missed opportunity: “Normally, these are exactly the races I pick out, so I’m really pissed off.”
