Haas working to solve “more serious” reliability issue…

Haas was back in action at Formula 1’s Barcelona shakedown event on Wednesday, but Oliver Bearman’s running in the VF-26 was hampered by two reliability issues – with one being branded as “more serious” by team boss Ayao Komatsu.

Wednesday marked the American outfit’s second day on track, with teams permitted to run on any three out of the five days.

“We’d sorted out so many issues from Monday, so when we were running on track today, I could see a huge step forward compared to day one – that’s a big positive for us,” Komatsu explained in a statement shared by the team.

"Unfortunately, in both the morning and afternoon sessions, we had two reliability issues.”

Bearman’s mileage in the morning of the Barcelona shakedown was hit by an issue that the team was able to rectify during the lunch break. The second issue he encountered proved to be more serious, but due to the secretive nature of the shakedown, further details of what the issue were are slim.

“I’m not worried about the one we had this morning, the one in the afternoon was a bit more serious and it’s obviously something we’re looking into and analysing exactly what happened – and of course, how to solve it,” Komatsu added.

“We’ll aim to get on top of it as quickly as possible, but at least it's happened relatively early in our overall pre-season programme.”

Oliver Bearman, Haas F1 Team (Photo by: Haas F1 Team)

Komatsu concluded that the team did still have positives to take from the day, including in terms of its operational performance compared with the first day of the shakedown.

Bearman was equally positive about his experience on track, his first in Barcelona after team-mate Esteban Ocon ran on the first day.

“It was great to get back into the car,” the Brit said. “We’d obviously had a bit of running at Fiorano at the weekend where we managed to do the maximum 200km, but today was my first experience of the car in the dry. That meant it was the first time I was able to push it on its limits, at least for what they were for the set-up being run today.

“The car definitely felt powerful with the full battery power, the amount of harvesting we had to do was not too bad. You can definitely feel the car is a bit more agile and more nimble with the extra weight loss from the previous regulations. I’m excited to see the car go through its paces more.”

Haas will now have to choose whether it runs for the final time on Thursday or Friday, with Komatsu concluding that this was “still TBC”.