Haas bag unexpected double points despite ‘too many mistakes’ from Bearman

Haas had a very up and down race in Las Vegas, with Ollie Bearman’s incredible start raising hopes of another strong score for the youngster. But then Esteban Ocon took up the charge, and the team seemingly just falling short of the top 10 – until McLaren’s disqualification was announced.

That double DSQ propelled both Haas cars into the points on home soil, with Ocon ninth and Bearman grabbing P10 for the team, to make it five races in a row that the rookie has scored. It was a good result to leave with, especially considering how difficult Bearman found the race to manage.

Having started P14 behind his team mate, Bearman navigated all the first corner chaos to emerge in seventh place, behind Oscar Piastri’s McLaren. He held onto that position until losing out to a recovering Charles Leclerc, but then ran eighth for lap after lap and looked on for a good score.

But he dropped a handful of places before pitting, and in the second stint it continued to go wrong for Bearman, who could not extract enough pace from the car to climb back up the order and then had to give way to his team mate on fresher tyres.

“The opening lap was really good and we were up to a really good spot. Unfortunately, after that, we were struggling with pace and I couldn't really find a rhythm with the car,” he explained.

“It was very difficult to drive in the low-speed corners and it got better on the hard, but I didn't change the aero balance, which normally, if I got a good read in the first stint, I would have been able to do that. That was really where the race fell short.

"I was struggling to keep the cars behind in the first stint, and I was just making too many mistakes, because the car was very difficult.”

Ocon’s race was made by the longest stint of anyone on the medium tyres, the Frenchman running his for 27 laps before swapping to the hards. On fresher rubber, Haas allowed him to pass Bearman to try and challenge Lewis Hamilton ahead – a driver Ocon had managed to frustrate earlier in the race.

“[I was] fighting with Lewis the whole race, really. I thought, 'What if I did try to keep him more behind in the first stint?', but he was much quicker in the first stint and then I was much quicker on the second one, but it wasn't quite enough for me to get close,” Ocon said.

“I think there were a lot of positives today. I think we executed the race well.”

Haas’ tenacity was rewarded when the news broke that Lando Norris and Piastri’s cars had been disqualified for a technical infringement, lifting Ocon to P9 and Bearman to P10. It means Haas are now one point ahead of Aston Martin in the fight for P7 in the championship.