United States Grand Prix: Sprint Qualifying Recap

Both exited qualifying in SQ1 – the opening round of the three-stage knockout session. Unable to set a flying final second lap, having missed the timing cut-off at the checkered flag, Bearman and Ocon’s first laps counted on the timesheets. Bearman set a 1:35.159 for P16, while Ocon ran a 1:36.003 for P19 – both set on the mandatory Pirelli P Zero Yellow medium tire.

Prior to Sprint qualifying, Friday’s only practice session afforded both drivers the opportunity to sample the 5.513-kilometer (3.426-mile), 20-turn circuit in their VF-25s – with Ocon trialing the latest upgrade package first on his car before being fitted on each car for Sprint qualifying. Bearman and Ocon utilized a new set of the hard and soft tires. Bearman finished practice P10 on the timesheets with a fastest lap of 1:34.333 on softs. Ocon placed directly behind his teammate in P11 thanks to a best effort of 1:34.368 – also on the soft compound.

Ollie Bearman:

“Sprint Quali today was a big shame. This morning I felt pretty happy with the car, but in qualifying I only got one lap, and I’m still learning the track, so that lap wasn’t my best, but I wasn’t expecting that lap to be my best. That’s why in SQ1 you have two laps to at least get a feeling of the car. I put the update on in between sessions, so a lot of things changed. We’ll need to review why we didn’t make it around in time, but there was no point in pushing flat out to make it as my tires would’ve been gone.”

Esteban Ocon:

“It was a very bad first lap unfortunately, I went into Turn 1 and lost the rear, so the first lap was quite compromised. On the second lap, I took the flag basically with the entire group around me, including Ollie. Our first lap wasn’t good enough, so it clearly wasn’t an ideal session but we’ll try and get the best out of it tomorrow. The Sprint is now going to be an experiment, we’re far from scoring points, so we’ll do the best we can and learn as much as we can about the car.”

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal:

"It was a very disappointing Sprint qualifying. I think FP1 was okay, and Ollie got on with it considering this is a new track for him. Esteban ran the new package in FP1, but we also put the update on Ollie for Sprint quali. What happened in the second run in SQ1, with time running out, we didn’t make it around in time so in hindsight we should’ve taken more margin to make it through. That made it extremely hard for Ollie, who’s had changes to his car, and we should’ve had two laps but essentially, he's only had one. On Esteban’s side, he struggled with rear grip feeling. It’s very tough to take. We need to look at timings, which is pretty clear, and then we need to look at Esteban’s feeling as well.”