Emilia Romagna Grand Prix: Practice Recap

MoneyGram Haas F1 Team drivers Ollie Bearman and Esteban Ocon both began the session sampling the Pirelli P Zero Yellow medium tires for baseline runs, with Bearman equipped with the update package brought to Imola. Having participated in FP1 last season for the team, the British driver’s best time came on the season debut of the Pirelli C6 soft compound – a 1:17.446 – for P18, while Ocon’s fastest lap on the same tire – a 1:17.662 – classified the Frenchman P20. High-fuel runs on the used medium rubber to end the session were brought to an early end after a red flag was brought out for Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto crashing into the gravel at Turn 18.

Conditions remained optimal for the start of FP2 – the second 60-minute practice held late afternoon. Bearman’s VF-25 left the garage on new medium tires, ahead of recording his quickest time of the day – a 1:16.818 – on softs. Ocon, also running the upgrade, replicated his teammates’ run plan, switching mediums for softs to record a 1:16.420 for P20. The duo then went back to used mediums for sustained running, the session momentarily halted for the stricken Racing Bull of Isack Hadjar.

MoneyGram Haas F1 Team ran a total of 90 laps on Friday across FP1 and FP2 – 46 by Bearman with 44 from Ocon.

Ollie Bearman:

“Overall, I think it’s been a positive day. We brought a new update to this track and FP1 was really about finding out how that correlated on the actual circuit and how that matched up to findings from simulations. We were able to extract a bit more from the car this afternoon, and honestly, I’ve been pretty happy so far. My feeling was good today, I had good confidence in the areas that we’ve appeared to improve so we’ll see how it goes tomorrow; it’s a very tight field. We’re still playing the trade-off between top speed and downforce level, and I think it’s going to be the topic of tonight with the wind changing tomorrow. I’m not sure how we’re going to fare, but I felt confident and that’s normally a good indicator.”

Esteban Ocon:

“It was a tough Friday, there’s a lot we need to figure out. Today we struggled a lot with the front end of the car. We spotted a few things, so we need to go over the data tonight but clearly there’s something not quite right, so we need to get on top of that tomorrow. The new C6 compound held together over a lap – nobody has really used it for a long run yet – so we’ll be learning a lot during the race, but there were no issues. Tonight, we’ll dig in as a team and come back tomorrow.”

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal:

“It was the first day of running in Imola with the upgrade package, and although we’ve still got to understand a lot more, I think it’s been a positive day. Especially on Ollie’s side, he’s happy with how the car is feeling, so we’ll look at the data tonight to fine-tune things. On Esteban’s car, in terms of balance, he’s less happy compared to Ollie but there’s no reason why we couldn’t get the desired car balance for Esteban, so we have more work to do tonight. Today’s execution was clean, we learned quite a lot, so our focus tomorrow is potentially getting into Q3, I don’t think it’s out of reach.”