Haas Formula 1 driver Oliver Bearman has praised Ferrari’s openness and help regarding the optimal operation of its new power unit.
F1 has switched to new engine regulations with much greater emphasis on electrical power, meaning energy management has become a key way to achieve lap time.
Teams need to figure out the ideal timing to deploy energy on the one hand and to lift and coast on the other, which Mercedes seems to have mastered, taking pole position with an eight-tenth margin on Red Bull and Ferrari at the Australian Grand Prix. The closest Mercedes-powered customer car, Oscar Piastri’s McLaren, was 0.862s off.
Williams team boss James Vowles admitted “what Mercedes are doing on the power unit is something that caught us off guard”, while McLaren’s Andrea Stella suggested there may be ‘systemic factors that a customer team can’t control’.
Asked in that context how Haas was looking at Ferrari to try and learn, Bearman replied: “I must say that Ferrari has been incredibly open and incredibly helpful with us in terms of the deployment strategy and giving us as much info as they can to help us. I think it’s a different situation that we have with Ferrari relative to McLaren and Mercedes.
“They’ve been incredibly helpful, but of course there’s a bigger difference between our cars. They’re almost a session ahead of us in terms of their quali. Their FP3 time was our quali time almost, if that makes sense.” Bearman was the lead Haas driver in qualifying, taking 12th place on the grid, 0.954s away from the faster Ferrari and 0.642s slower than the Scuderia’s FP3 benchmark.
“As the lap time goes up, the demands of energy change a lot,” the Briton continued. “The amount of lift-and-coast, the gear usage, all of these things you have to pre-empt and have a look towards qualifying for. A corner might be flat out for them or a corner might be a lift for them, whereas it’s a brake for us or a downshift. Then we need to adjust it in our own way.
Oliver Bearman, Haas F1 Team
Photo by: Haas F1 Team
“Australia, we went in and figured it out as we were going. Now, having done that weekend, we have two or three points. We expect to be slower in these corners, maybe we’re geared down in these corners. Also, when you’re slower at apexes, obviously you have to deploy more power as well on the exit. It’s all a big knock-on effect. That’s useful to know and info to bring forward for the future races.”
Asked if Haas knew what the delta was with Ferrari and could adjust, Bearman said: “I think so. We gained info already in Australia. Turn 5 was an example where Ferrari were flat from the beginning, just looking at their GPS speed, whereas for us it wasn’t flat until the end of FP2 or even FP3. In terms of strategy, you have to change the way that you approach things. Now, just looking at the track, as an engineering group, we identify some corners where we expect to see some differences, then take that forward into the race. That info is good to have.”
As for the team’s prospects for the Shanghai weekend, Bearman insisted Haas would focus on the main qualifying and race given how likely the top four teams – Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren – were to lock out the eight points-scoring positions in the sprint event.
“The top four teams seem to be in a different race”, the 20-year-old said. “Given a normal weekend or a normal sprint race, that’s the top eight. Only the top eight score points. Obviously, it’s really important to have a good sprint qualifying and try everything you can for the sprint race, because there’s still possibilities, anything could happen like we saw last week. It’s going to be important to take the info and focus.
“The priority for us is still going to be the main race because that’s the biggest likelihood of scoring points, which is what we need. I would say the info that we’ve taken forward from Australia has helped. Also, the fact that, to be honest, in Australia we started already in FP1 at 95%. We didn’t really have to change too much. It means that I hope we can start on the right foot again here this weekend. Just stress-test the car, stress-test all of the systems in sprint qualifying. Priority one is to have a good main qualifying.”
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