Much improved Haas Racing ready for challenge at Miami Grand Prix, its first home race of season

Winnipeg Free Press

03-05-2025

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Oliver Bearman considers the Miami Grand Prix a highlight on the F1 calendar for many reasons: The sunny South Florida weather. The fanfare. It's the first of three United States races for his American-led Haas Formula 1 team.
But Bearman, Haas' 19-year-old rookie who will be racing at the Miami International Autodrome for the first time on Sunday, acknowledged that it will be a challenge for his team.
'I expect a difficult weekend,' Bearman said, 'considering the circumstances, particularly that I haven't been here and it's a Sprint weekend. But I also had that in Brazil last year. I also had that in China this year. And I wouldn't say those are particularly simple shots either. I don't really know how it's going to go, but I expect that if I have a good feeling with the car, I hope to be able to get as much as I can out of it.'
The Miami Grand Prix is the first opportunity of the season for Haas — the only American-owned team in F1 — to compete in front of its home fans, but the weekend got off to an uneven start.
Bearman, in his first ever action at the track, caused an early end to Friday's practice with a crash, and his teammate, Esteban Ocon, was given a warning for impeding McLaren's Lando Norris during the session.
In Saturday's Sprint race in Miami, Bearman started at the back of the grid but zipped through the field for what would have been an eighth-place finish and a point for Haas, but he was hit with a five-second penalty after the race for an unsafe release and stripped of the point. That was followed by a disappointing showing in qualifying later that evening, where the British driver again finished last in the field.
'I don't know (what happened),' Bearman said afterward. 'Just didn't have the feeling. Too messy of a lap. … It was a messy session overall.'
Still, Haas will have a good chance at scoring points on Sunday. Ocon qualified ninth in his first top-10 qualifier since joining Haas this season. He said it was his best qualifying session of the year, but the team still has work to do after Bearman's surprising outing.
'This is what we need to work on, our consistency,' Ocon said. 'The window of our car is really, really small. And even though you try and put the cars together in the same setup, we still see big differences in those cars. We need to work on that.'
Mostly inconsistent since its debut season in 2016, Haas improved its on-track performance the past year under Ayao Komatsu, who replaced longtime team principal Guenther Steiner for a change of direction after several dismal seasons.
Haas finished seventh in the constructor standings in 2024 with 58 points, its best result since finishing fifth with 98 points behind drivers Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen in 2018, and up from a last-place finish in 2023.
Haas still has never won an F1 race or scored a podium finish, but there is excitement about its trajectory behind the new lineup of Bearman, the prodigy who raced as a substitute for Ferrari last year before joining Haas as a fulltime driver, and Ocon, winner of the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix with Alpine and the only Grand Prix winner to race for Haas.
'Esteban and Ollie have been instrumental in providing direction and working with the team every day,' Komatsu said, 'not to mention some of the incredible race drives they've produced already.'
In a busy start to the 2025 season with five races in six weeks, Haas has placed in the top eight in three races and is currently sixth in standings with 20 points. Bearman has accounted for 13 points. He and Ocon jointly accumulated 14 points at the Chinese Grand Prix in late March, when disqualifications boosted Ocon from his seventh-place finish to fifth and Bearman from 10th to eighth.
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Bearman has already established himself as a solid points scorer for Haas as the team continues its climb. His season debut at the Australian Grand Prix was spoiled by a crash, but the British driver grabbed points in three straight races after that.
'He's a super quick driver,' Ocon said of his teammate. 'Super talented, very professional, very detailed on the car set up. I think that's straight away the thing I saw (at first). Technically, he's above any rookies that I've seen in the past. He's much more prepared than I was when I arrived in F1.'
Ocon has taken points finishes in all three of his races in Miami, with his best coming at the inaugural race in 2022 when finished eighth. Sunday will be his first Miami race with Haas.
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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing