Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu has admitted he expected better from Esteban Ocon in the 2025 Formula 1 season.
Ocon joined Haas last year after leaving his longtime Alpine outfit, teaming up with Oliver Bearman, but against all expectations he was outscored by his rookie team-mate over the 2025 campaign, with 38 points to 41.
Bearman also outqualified his elder 17-11 (excluding technical issues), and these statistics were no fluke. Ocon’s results were up and down; as the season progressed and the young Briton’s form ramped up, he found himself outperformed more and more often.
Ocon was growing increasingly unhappy with his car’s behaviour, especially under braking, but Komatsu believed the problem lay with his driving style – given Bearman had no such issue.
All things considered, Ocon’s inaugural campaign at Haas did not live up to expectations, and his team principal is very open about it.
“If you purely look at the sporting result, without going to details, for sure nobody’s satisfied with Esteban’s sporting result last year, right?” Komatsu said. “You know, he’s a team-mate against a rookie. Yes, amazing rookie, but nonetheless, he’s got 10 years of F1 under his belt. He’s a race winner, he’s a podium finisher. So we expected more from him.
Esteban Ocon, Haas F1 Team VF-25, Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal of Haas F1, Oliver Bearman, Haas F1 Team VF-25
Photo by: Haas F1 Team
“And obviously, it’s not totally his fault, it’s 50-50, right? Sometimes it’s the team, we couldn’t give him the car that he was comfortable [with], especially in qualifying.
“And then some circuits, that’s got exaggerated much more than other circuits. Look at Baku, you know, he really wasn’t happy with certain braking performance, then he was miles off in the qualifying pace. Yes, Baku happened to be one of Ollie’s strongest circuits, but we didn’t expect Esteban’s worst day to be so far off.
“But again, there’s not one reason, there’s not just a driver, there’s not just a team, and then each instance is different. So there’s no common underlying factor, there’s no [silver] bullet; it’s just a process, how we work together to get the bottom of it so much quicker and then put things in place for next race.
“That’s the bit I feel we – all of us together, team and driver – didn’t do it very well last year, because I really felt like we should have got on top of that quicker.”
Komatsu brought up last year’s season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, where Ocon struggled so much on Friday that he told Canal+ he “felt like a rookie who’s never driven an F1 car”.
“There’s a lot of instability,” he then added. “I feel like I can’t drive anymore, I can’t put a lap together anymore. It’s been unmanageable for many races.
“We can’t solve the issues and it doesn’t fit my driving style, so… We’re just slow. We’re very, very far from where we should be.”
Yet, he narrowly outqualified Bearman to reach Q3; he then took a fine seventh in the race, from eighth on the grid.
Esteban Ocon, Haas F1 Team
Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images
“Look at Abu Dhabi on Friday, he was completely off the pace, like four tenths off Ollie; Saturday, bang, he was on the pace,” Komatsu pointed out.
“Again, it’s not just one big [silver] bullet, it’s a few – I wouldn’t say little things, but I could even say little things, few things that really trigger, let’s say, a snowball effect. And then we’ve really got to get on top of those things quicker, because Esteban’s potential is clear.
“If you look at Abu Dhabi, what he can do on Saturday, Sunday, coming off the back of a very poor Friday, that’s the talent he has, that’s the capability he has. And then we’ve got to harness that, we’ve got to make sure we use that, because we really need two drivers this year. I mean, we needed both of them last year, but we need more this year.”
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– The Autosport.com Team
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