Ocon: We lacked confidence under braking.

      Haas F1 drivers ended up quite far down the order after the first practice sessions in Las Vegas, explaining this by difficulties related to the condition of the street circuit’s surface, which did not provide normal grip.

      Oliver Bearman (17th): “Although we understood that on a circuit like this the surface would improve very quickly, to be honest, on the first laps I was simply shocked by how poor the grip was. I don’t even know how to describe it!

      But from how rapidly the times were improving, you could tell the surface was getting better. During the second practice we switched to the soft tyres fairly early, and when I returned to the pits I was in a decent position, but when I was about to go back out I was already five or six seconds off the best time.

      Definitely it was a tough session — because of traffic issues and because the running was interrupted several times by red flags. But we still managed to gather a lot of useful information, especially since this circuit is new to me. I still need to find the right rhythm, but I’m already looking forward to tomorrow’s qualifying.

      Compared to other street circuits, driving in Las Vegas is the least enjoyable. Normally racing on them is fun and great, but here the level of grip is too low, and when the walls are so close that’s not the most pleasant combination of factors. The speeds are incredibly high, so it’s quite dangerous to drive, although the Las Vegas circuit itself is very interesting.”

      Esteban Ocon (19th): “As always, this circuit is not easy to work on because it was difficult to warm the tyres up to the required temperatures. And since it also started to drizzle, that made the task even harder, but it’s interesting to tackle.

      In preparing for tomorrow we have a lot to do and need to make improvements across a number of areas; additionally, we couldn’t complete a run on the soft tyres because the running was interrupted, but at least we gathered enough information to continue preparing for tomorrow.

      I have no doubt everything will be fine, although we need to work on finding the right approach to the tyres and learning to get them up to temperature quickly. It’s also important to gain confidence under braking — today we lacked that, as well as top speed on the straights. But we’ll see what results we can produce in tomorrow’s qualifying.”