Chinese Grand Prix: Sprint Race / Qualifying Recap

In a largely processional Sprint – with overtakes few and far between, Bearman successfully held station from his P12 starting spot. Spending the majority of the race sandwiched between the two Williams entries of Albon and Sainz, Bearman only dropped down the mid-field pack in the dying laps with a drop off on his Pirelli P Zero Yellow medium tires – the Brit taking the checkered flag in P15. Ocon started from P18, quickly passing the Alpine of Doohan to gain a position. The Frenchman was later passed by Lawson in the Red Bull but a penultimate lap move on the Sauber of Bortolleto promoted Ocon back to P16 at the end.

Saturday afternoon then saw Ocon and Bearman back in action to qualify for Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix – with Ocon securing 11th and Bearman 17th respectively.

Ocon just missed out on landing his VF-25 in Q3, delivering a solid performance in Q2 on new softs (1:31.625) to take P11 - only three hundredths of a second shy from making the top 10. The Frenchman had graduated into Q2 beating the traffic in the closing stages to clock a 1:31.876 for P13. Bearman wasn’t quite so fortunate – unable to start a third planned run due to traffic on his out lap, he exited Q1 qualifying in P17 – his best lap a 1:32.018 on his second set of softs.

Ollie Bearman:

“It was a tough Sprint, we’re still missing a bit of pace. We made a good start and held position but after that it was just a case of trying to manage the tires. I expected the fronts to drop off and they did a little bit more than some of the others. In qualifying we had planned three runs today in Q1, and we just didn’t quite make it out there for the last one. It’s tight to fit three runs in with all the turnaround and everything – unfortunately I just didn’t cross the line in time. We changed a few things on the car, my first lap was getting used to that, second one was better. I think the changes are more based towards the race so hopefully we can have a good one tomorrow.”

Esteban Ocon:

“We learned quite a bit in the Sprint, obviously used it to get more data. It looks like it was difficult with tires for everyone – more for some than others. On our side it was a bit better at the end. We’ll give everything a good look but the race pace was okay I would say – that’s something we need to keep pushing forward though. For qualifying we probably changed about three quarters of the car, it was a huge turnaround from the team. They did a really good job to improve the car from the Sprint to where it is now – so I’m very happy with that. I think there’s still some performance to be gained from the car, so this isn’t a definite stop on where we are. So, it’s positive – especially coming from Melbourne. Let’s try and optimize tomorrow. We’re close to the points so let’s see what we can get.”

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal:

“We struggled a bit in the Sprint with tire management and the car balance. So, based on what we learned in the Sprint, we changed the set-up on both cars ahead of qualifying. The positive there is it went in very much the right direction – both drivers were much happier with the car in qualifying. I know it was the right direction for tomorrow’s race as well. Another positive was how close we got in terms of getting into Q3 – Esteban’s final lap in Q2 was a good lap, it wasn’t perfect, but if I remember correctly it was only something like a tenth off Hamilton in P8. That was a good effort. I’m sure Ollie would have had a similar chance as well, he just couldn’t start his final timed lap in Q1 by the tiniest of margins. There are a couple of things operationally we can improve. It’s all about tiny margins but the encouraging thing is we’re understanding the car better. We managed to make a good change between the Sprint and qualifying. Let’s see what we can do tomorrow.”