Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix: Practice Recap

TGR Haas F1 Team drivers Ollie Bearman and Esteban Ocon returned to the venue where they first put the VF-26 through its initial paces in January at the Shakedown Week ahead of February’s official pre-season testing. Both drivers opening their weekend running with stints on the Pirelli P Zero White hard and Red soft tires in FP1 – the opening 60-minute practice session. Bearman set a best lap on the softs of 1:18.172 – good for P11 at the checkered. Ocon ran early on his fresh set of softs, taking P16 on the time chart with a fastest tour of 1:18.372.

FP2 saw the Spanish sun continue to shine over the track late-afternoon when second practice got underway at 17:00 local – the air temperature topping out at 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). Bearman and Ocon started off with baseline runs on the Yellow medium rubber before swapping onto softs for quali sims. Both drivers subsequently clocked their fastest laps – Bearman taking P12 with a 1:16.945, Ocon placing P17 on a 1:17.538 effort. High-fuel stints rounded out the engineering program for the day.

TGR Haas F1 Team ran a total of 112 laps on Friday across FP1 and FP2 – 56 each by Bearman and Ocon.

Ollie Bearman:

"It's been a decent day overall. This morning was tough, we were struggling with the same limitations that we've had since we introduced this upgrade package, which is the car being quite nervous on entry, making it difficult to set up the car. We managed to connect the balance a bit more and make it nicer to drive for FP2. We're closer to where we want to be, there's still some work needed, but I'm happy with the progress made from this morning till now."

Esteban Ocon:

"I think we could've done a better job with the performance running today, but it's important that we do that tomorrow. It was a good day of work otherwise, good to be back in Barcelona and I think we can see the improvements of the car from the winter. It's now up to us to improve overnight and see what we can do tomorrow."

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal:

"We've come back to a circuit that we know very well. In FP1 we focused on test items and learning, where we were able to get some answers. In FP2 we improved the car a little bit and it's more in the ballpark now. We still need to find a bit more though. It's been quite challenging on the energy deployment side as it's been a bit inconsistent, so we need to get on top of that as well. The tires are only one lap tires, so you've only got one chance to nail it, and we have to make sure we have good enough preparation as we head into FP3 tomorrow. For the race, with the hot temperatures degradation will be high, so we need to look through the data and see what we can do. The focus tomorrow will be on qualifying prep in FP3 and building on from FP2."