United States Grand Prix: Race Reap

Ocon took the start from 15th position on Pirelli P Zero Red soft tires and moved up to 12th place courtesy of a strong first lap. Ocon came into the pits on lap 21 for White hard tires, cycling back into 12th overall. Ocon was overhauled by both Audi drivers, and then had to accept second-best against the recovering Racing Bulls of Arvid Lindblad, on fresher soft tires. Ocon brought the VF-26 home in 14th at the checkered flag to register another race finish.

Bearman started from 13th on the grid, also on soft tires, and moved up to 11th position on the opening lap. Bearman combatively worked past Pierre Gasly into Turn 13 on lap two to run inside the top 10, though sustained damage in the process, and was deemed culpable for causing a collision. Bearman lost places before pitting on lap 13 for White hard tires, and came in for a second stop for Yellow mediums on lap 22, at which he served his 10-second time penalty. The damage to his VF-26 sustained in the early race clash was such that the decision was taken to retire the car after 24 laps.

TGR Haas F1 Team maintains seventh position in the Constructors’ Championship on 30 points.

Up front Kimi Antonelli took his ninth grand prix victory for Mercedes, ahead of Scuderia Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

Ollie Bearman:

“After the VSC, I managed to get a good launch and good battery level, because I caught the two cars in front of me very quickly. It made Pierre go defensive into Turn 12, and at Turn 13, I sent one up the inside, and to be honest, he saw me as he left space but to me, it didn’t feel enough. He gave space, but only half a car's worth, and I was committed, so we made a bit of contact – I picked up a huge amount of damage on my car, and I probably damaged his car as well. It was a shame as I felt like I was massively penalised anyway, as the damage ruined my race, and on top of that I picked up the penalty. In my view, it was a racing incident. I sent a move and felt entitled to more space than I got, I didn’t lose control, and I had to climb up the kerb to try and avoid contact. I don’t regret going for the move because at this stage in the season, if we don’t do anything special and get a bit lucky and be aggressive and go for it, we’re just not going to score points as we’re not always fast enough to score them on merit.”

Esteban Ocon:

“We had a mega start, we always do, we’re leading the stats on that. Since the beginning of the year, we’ve always gained two or three places at the start, and we did that once again in COTA. I’m proud that we’ve worked so well on that, and the pit stop went well as well, but on the second stint, we struggled to keep the other cars behind. The problems that we faced throughout the weekend came back, as I still had front-locking, and I still had quite a lot of understeer in high-speed. These inconsistencies are something that we really need to work on and understand, and we need to make sure we get rid of them in Mexico. The positive is that we did reduce it a little bit with setup, but that’s the maximum we can do with the current parts.”

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal:

“The race result was a shame, but I think there are lots of positives to take from this weekend. Both cars had great starts, and Ollie was fighting for P9 or P10, and without the damage he sustained, I think he had the speed to fight for that. We knew our race pace would be stronger than our quali pace. On Esteban’s side, he’s been fighting with front-locking issue, which got better, but towards the second half of the race, it came back and the pace wasn’t competitive. In terms of our operations, the fact that Ollie was happy from the get-go on lap 1, that’s exactly what we need. The fact that between Singapore and Austin, two very different circuits, we've unlocked performance – we’d like to build on that, and I hope we can fight hard in Mexico.”