Canadian Grand Prix: Sprint Race / Qualifying Recap

The team opted to make changes to Bearman’s VF-26 setup ahead of the Sprint requiring the Brit to surrender his P15 grid slot and start from pit-lane. With the race then effectively serving as another opportunity to understand the new upgrade package, Bearman endured a relatively solitary time on-track, pitting in the closing stages from P17 for an adjustment, before taking the checkered flag one lap down in P18. Ocon started the Sprint from P14 and climbed as high as P11 – the Frenchman remaining on the lead lap throughout eventually finishing P13.

Qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix once again saw the team in search of pace – with both cars running the upgrade package for the knockout sessions. Ocon ran two new sets of soft tires, his fastest lap his last tour in Q1 – a 1:14.845 to place P17 and out in the first group with only the top 16 progressing. Bearman proved quicker advancing to Q2 in P12 thanks to a 1:14.449 on his second set of soft rubber.

With just two flying runs, each on fresh softs, Bearman’s afternoon ended with a P16 classification in Q2 – his fastest lap a 1:14.416. Q3 featured the fastest 10 drivers with Mercedes teammates George Russell (1:12.578) and Kimi Antonelli (1:12.646) locking out the front-row of the grid for Sunday’s 70-lap race.

Ollie Bearman:

“We decided last night to break Parc Ferme and try a few things on the setup. Taking a deeper dive into the data, we saw some characteristics and behaviors from the car that were unexpected, so with that, we tried to find the root cause and take a step back on setup, and it was still a very difficult race. We need to find a way to find some performance in this car, as so far it’s been a challenge. I think we found ourselves with a car with a better corner balance in qualifying, and now we’re finding out that with a bit of confidence, we’re finally pushing the entries and locking the fronts each time. We’ve been so poor throughout this weekend that we’ve not uncovered these issues until now, when everyone else found that out in FP1. It’s going to make it tough, but it’s wet tomorrow, so hopefully there will be some opportunities.”

Esteban Ocon:

“It was still difficult in the Sprint, but at least we got some laps under our belt. For myself and for Ollie, I hope we’ll be able to have a little bit more of a picture than what we had after yesterday. We’ve done the laps, we’ve got the data now, and the important thing is to see where we can improve as we’re struggling a bit with pace, balance, braking – there are a few areas where we need to improve. We completely changed the car just before qualifying, so it was not easy to get a proper feel, really, and we only have three or four laps to get used to everything. I was in the position of trying to find out where the grip is better, where it is worse, with the updated car, and it was very difficult to put everything together. It was the ultimate chance, that last lap in qualifying really. We keep pushing and see what we can get tomorrow.”

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal:

“In terms of the overall result, it’s been a disappointing day, but I think we’ve started uncovering specific issues and understandings, so although the result is not great whatsoever, there are lots of positives to take. We have to start the weekend better, as in FP1, we really were far off in terms of car setup. At a circuit like this, where the driver needs to gain confidence, we didn’t give them that opportunity. The car we managed to get for Esteban and Ollie in qualifying, that’s where we should’ve started the weekend.

“In terms of the aero package, the good thing is we confirmed that the aero load is delivering, but we started uncovering what is causing certain issues in certain corners, so we can now isolate it. If we really understand that and get to the bottom of it, we can direct the development well. It’s very disappointing to qualify where we have, but now we have some specific pointers. At this difficult time, we’ve had it before like in Melbourne last year, and we managed to develop the car very well. It’s one of those hiccups that’s in front of us, but there are already some good indications, so we’ve just got to stick together, work together, and improve and solve it.”