Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu says there was a big missed opportunity in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix despite Ollie Bearman scoring a point on his debut for the team.
Bearman started from 10th place and ran competitively early on before fading in the opening stint, then being involved in a fight with Franco Colapinto and Lewis Hamilton that eventually resulted in a P10 finish. The rookie’s performance was rewarded with a point when Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez crashed late on, but Komatsu believes a top-six finish was a possibility given the car’s pace had the team executed the race more effectively.
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“It’s really mixed, we should have done better,” Komatsu told SiriusXM. “We had really good pace, and certain things were less than ideal so we only came away with a P10, but in my mind we should have finished ahead of [Alex] Albon at least, possibly fighting against [Fernando] Alonso.
“To start off with, the first stint Nico [Hulkenberg] was dong really well and Ollie wasn’t doing so well, but because he was basically over-managing the tires. Yes he could have done better, but from the team’s side we should have done much better – looking at Nico’s data – to tell Ollie ‘the tires are better than expected, you can push more’. So basically Ollie lost race time for no reason during the first stint.
“That’s why we had to swap the drivers during the first stint, which Ollie wasn’t too happy about but I totally understand that the team should have done a better job in the first place so that gave him a chance to up his pace a bit more.
“Then in the second stint on the hard tire, both drivers had amazing pace. Really good pace. Of course we were going to the end and looking at Colapinto and Alonso’s lap times, we were catching them pretty easily. So if Nico could be there and if Ollie had proper first stint pace starting from where he was, he would have been a step better. So we really should have had a chance to beat Alonso and Albon as well.”
While there was a clear loss of time for Bearman in the opening part of the race, Komatsu says it was Hulkenberg who should have scored more heavily but for a number of incidents late on that quickly caught the team out.
“Then with Nico, just before the last yellow flag he hit the wall on the Turn 15 entry with the right front tire. Then he accidentally pressed the in lap button, and he didn’t realize. So of course he felt the car wasn’t right because it wasn’t in timed lap mode, so he had less power.
“So he thought he had a puncture, he panicked, and our communication to solve that problem wasn’t efficient enough. So while he sorted himself out, he lost position to Colapinto, which is so frustrating because he had something like three seconds – a pretty comfortable lead. He shouldn’t have lost that.
“Then when the Sainz shunt happened, Nico was still mentally recovering from that and he hit something big in that yellow section, and when he came out of that yellow section and saw the green he wasn’t ready, so Hamilton already overtook him. So he was out of the points.
“We should have at least come away with four points, minimum, but if we had done better with Ollie earlier it would have been more. Great that we scored one point, but I feel like a big missed opportunity as well. The midfield is so tight, you’ve got to be perfect, you cannot make these mistakes. So that why it is a bit mixed.”