Pre-Season Testing: Day 1 Recap

The British rookie ran the morning session (10:00-13:00 local) before handing over driving duties to Frenchman Esteban Ocon in the afternoon (15:00-19:00 local). The all-new teammate pairing logged an impressive total of 160 laps on the opening day of the three-day test.

Bearman (19) – with three grand prix starts to his credit last season, was back in action having first sampled the VF-25 in Bahrain on Monday undertaking the team’s second and final promotional filming day. With the run plan consisting of a series of baseline runs on Pirelli’s C3 tire and a final outing on the C2 compound – Bearman completed the third most laps of the session, his 72 tours only bested by Antonelli (Mercedes – 78) and Tsunoda (Racing Bulls – 78).

Ocon (28) – with 156 grand prix starts under his belt, hopped in behind the wheel of the VF-25 for the afternoon after the break. Ocon also sampled the C2 and C3 tires across his early stints before the session was marred by a significant red flag stop for a power outage just as dusk hit and the circuit’s floodlights fired up. Track action resumed with 50 minutes left before the scheduled checkered flag time, but a one-hour extension was agreed to take run time through to 20:00 local allowing MoneyGram Haas F1 Team to complete its planned run program. Ocon quickly added to his 37-lap tally – extending his total to 88 laps by the end of the session, the highest individual driver lap-count on the day.

Day two of pre-season testing will see Ocon start on Thursday morning with Bearman returning for the afternoon.



Ayao Komatsu – Team Principal:

“It was largely a good day, we completed our entire program, did what we needed to do and found a couple of answers we needed as well. Both drivers had a very good day getting in lots of laps. We’ve had a lot of change in race team personnel, but I felt communication and teamwork across the team was very good. So, a positive start to pre-season testing from us.”

Ollie Bearman:

“That’s day one in Bahrain completed and I’m very happy to be back with the team and back in the car. It’s my first time on track in Bahrain and it’s a new beast in Formula 1, so it’s very nice. We got through the entire run plan as we wanted to, and the results were as expected – as we’ve been learning about the car and its characteristics. I’m now looking forward to testing the limits over the next two days.”

Esteban Ocon:

“It was a very solid day, and on both mine and Ollie’s side there’s been a lot of learning that happened today as it’s the first time we’ve experienced the car in good condition. It’s been a good day as we completed the run program. We’ve focused on longer-run performance – that was clear – and it was very interesting. We’ve got a lot of data gathered, and I go again tomorrow morning.”