2026 Shakedown Week – Running Day 2 Recap

Following a productive first day on Monday with Esteban Ocon driving, and Tuesday spent reviewing the data gathered, Wednesday saw TGR Haas F1 Team up and running promptly shortly after 09:00 local time.

Bearman sampled the VF-26 at Fiorano Circuit in Italy on Saturday while Wednesday afforded the British racer a second opportunity to familiarize himself with the car around the 4.657-kilometer (2.893-mile), 14-turn circuit – home of June’s Spanish Grand Prix.

Mileage in the morning was somewhat restricted due to a minor reliability issue – something the team rectified successfully prior to the lunch break. Having added more laps to the tally post-lunch, Bearman’s day ended prematurely with a second unrelated reliability issue resulting in the VF-26 returning to the garage permanently late afternoon.

Conditions remained dry throughout the day but cool, with air temperature topping out at 11 degrees Celsius (51.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

TGR Haas F1 Team is permitted one final day to run at Shakedown Week now, with each team permitted a total of three days of track time across January 26-30. Official testing follows at the Bahrain International Circuit, February 11-13 and 18-20 respectively, before the opening round of the 2026 FIA Formula 1 World Championship – the Australian Grand Prix, held in Melbourne, March 6-8.

Ayao Komatsu – Team Principal:

“We had Ollie in the car today and obviously we’d taken lots of learnings from our first day of running here in Spain. We’d sorted out so many issues from Monday, so when we were running on track today, I could see a huge step forward compared to day one – that’s a big positive for us. Unfortunately, in both the morning and afternoon sessions, we had two reliability issues. I’m not worried about the one we had this morning, the one in the afternoon was a bit more serious and it’s obviously something we’re looking into and analyzing exactly what happened – and of course, how to solve it. We’ll aim to get on top of it as quickly as possible but at least it's happened relatively early in our overall pre-season program. We’ll need to decide when we run again, whether that’s Thursday or Friday now – it’s still TBC. I’m continuing to take the positives we’ve seen though – particularly how we’ve improved operational performance from day one to day two of running.”

Ollie Bearman:

“It was great to get back into the car. We’d obviously had a bit of running at Fiorano at the weekend where we managed to do the maximum 200 kilometers, but today was my first experience of the car in the dry. That meant it was the first time I was able to push it on its limits, at least for what they were for the set-up being run today. Honestly, I was quite impressed – it’s been such a big overhaul of regulations, and this track is quite a tough one for these 2026 cars given the energy harvesting that we have to do. The car definitely felt powerful with the full battery power, the amount of harvesting we had to do was not too bad. You can definitely feel the car is a bit more agile and more nimble with the extra weight loss from the previous regulations. I’m excited to see the car go through its paces more. We had a bit of an interrupted day but we still got through some important items and learned some big things about this car. It’s a shame on one hand, it’s the nature of these tests, but it’s good to get these things out of the way now as opposed to later.”