2026 Shakedown Week – Running Day 3 Recap

The VF-26 was the first car out of the garages at 09:00 local – Bearman wasting no time in logging valuable mileage. The British racer worked through a busy on-track plan including sustained runs on different tire compounds, each stint affording the team crucial data to review while understanding the performance parameters of the new regulations introduced for the 2026 season.

Ocon returned to the VF-26 for the afternoon session having set the most laps behind the wheel on Monday’s opening day at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. While Wednesday’s reliability issues limited the team’s mileage on its second test day, the VF-26 ran faultlessly through Friday’s morning program and into the afternoon, where Ocon successfully continued to add to the laps banked.

Next up for TGR Haas F1 Team is official testing, hosted at the Bahrain International Circuit, February 11-13 and 18-20 respectively, followed by the opening round of the 24-race 2026 FIA Formula 1 World Championship – the Australian Grand Prix, March 6-8.

Ayao Komatsu – Team Principal:

“We had our reliability issues on Wednesday, but again, everyone on the team did a great job to get things turned around and get us back out on Friday for our final day on track. We received what we needed, in terms of replacement parts, quite late yesterday but then the preparation of the car overnight was brilliant – we were ready to go out at 09:00 today. We stuck to our program and really learned a lot. We’re just constantly learning about the car. With the new regulations, on both the power-unit and chassis side, it’s a big change in terms of how you get the performance out of the car and how to be consistent both in one-lap qualifying style performance and then sustained running. Everything we learn here though puts us in a better spot for going to Bahrain testing. I’m really happy with the progress we’ve made. Today it’s not just been about the quantity of laps, it’s been about the quality of laps and that’s a positive thing for us. We’ve got a huge amount of data to look at, again – things like aero-characteristics are very different, and there’s lots to digest on the PU side as well. We’ve got a week to go over everything and put improvements in place for Bahrain.”

Ollie Bearman:

“It was a good morning – we did double the mileage of Wednesday in about half the time, so that’s positive. We obviously had issues on Wednesday – ones we understood and rectified, and so thankfully I was able to get back into the car today and enjoy a very clean program. I learned a hell of a lot about the car today. We’ve got some quality laps banked which helps the data, which wasn’t really the case on Wednesday with our limited track time. We’ve got the opportunity with Esteban in the afternoon to build on that. I’ve got some first impressions now about what I like about the car and what I dislike in terms of things like its balance. We’re already seeing what we can do to rectify things for the afternoon’s running and of course then for Bahrain. We have a brand new car, brand new power-unit, new regulations – it’s a huge change for Formula 1, and it’s really nice to be involved in that from a driving perspective. I’ve never had the opportunity before to go through a big regulation change coming up from spec series before joining F1 last season. I really feel like, as drivers, we can get stuck in and make a difference as well.”

Esteban Ocon:

“It’s been a crazy effort from the whole team to do what they’ve achieved, from driving in Fiorano and turning the car around to be driving two days later in Barcelona. I don’t think from the outside people will realise how tough that is, as it has been around 15 days that the team has only had a few hours sleep each night. It’s been an enormous effort with a lot of learning from this test, we’ve completed a lot of valuable laps, and I think it’s been very productive. There’s obviously still a lot of things we need to dig into, and we have two more tests for that, but I think it’s a solid first base to look at things and hopefully get more performance from the car ahead of the season.”