Berman: I was even glad it started raining on the day of the race.

      Oliver Berman, Haas F1 driver, spoke at the FIA press conference in Shanghai about the events of the Australian weekend, when he had a lot of problems, but still he became one of only two newcomers to the championship who managed to reach the finish line.

      Oliver Berman: "Of course, the weekend in Melbourne was difficult, especially since I made ridiculous mistakes and made it difficult for myself. But still, I'm glad that I was able to reach the finish line of the race, although our competitiveness left much to be desired. Nevertheless, we have collected a lot of information. Hopefully, the weekend in China will be accompanied by dry weather, and we will try to put all this into practice.

      The weekend program includes a sprint, and this is a new track for me, so I anticipate that it will be interesting. From what I've learned from working on the simulator, the track here is great, and I'm looking forward to exploring it, but it's going to be important to get to the right level of speed quickly to prepare for qualifying for the sprint.

      I think our whole team was surprised at the first stage of the season that we were so slow, but we have a few suggestions about the reasons for this, because first of all we lacked pace on Sunday.

      Unfortunately, we won't have much time for training in Shanghai, and the sprint weekend is taking place at such an early stage of the season when we're not quite ready for it, but we'll see what we can achieve. I am still confident that we will be able to perform much better at the Chinese stage.

      Of course, I have to admit that I didn't do enough laps in Australia in preparation for the race and I was disappointed that the weekend was going so badly. I was even glad that it started to rain on the day of the race, both because in such conditions the speed capabilities of all the teams are somewhat balanced, and because I hardly had time to work on a dry track.

      But on Sunday, I was completely focused only on getting to the finish line of the Grand Prix, during which there were so many gatherings, because the conditions were very difficult. When the highway started to dry out, you still had to act very carefully because of the white lines on the asphalt - I would even compare it to a minefield! In general, during that race, my main task was just to survive..."