Oliver Berman: For me, a perfect storm has formed.
For Haas, sprint qualifying in Qatar ended in the second session, in which Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon posted 12th and 15th fastest times. The drivers are not expecting points in the sprint and see the short Saturday race as preparation for qualifying.
Oliver Bearman (12th): "I think tyre wear plays a somewhat smaller role this weekend than in previous years. Over time the track surface has become rougher, and this year it's become easier to warm the tyres up.
Unfortunately, on the decisive flying lap I ended up behind a driver who went off, and there was a lot of gravel on the track in front of me, which is the main problem at this circuit. Many of us have said that the gravel trap at that corner is not the best solution to the problem, because it ends up everywhere, damages the tyres and ruins laps. In the third sector I hit traffic, so you could say it was a perfect storm for me.
I think it's difficult to overtake at this circuit because there's only one DRS zone and it's short. The aim is to get as much information as possible in the sprint ahead of qualifying.
I believe our car is quicker than the result suggests, so I'm a bit disappointed with that qualifying."
Esteban Ocon (15th): "A difficult qualifying. We haven't yet managed to make the car quick at this circuit. The fast corners are especially tricky, where the car behaves unstable. In the slow corners we have a lack of turn-in/understeer.
The situation is made worse by the fact that we currently can't change the front wing, so we have issues in both types of corners — that's where we were losing time. After the practice the team changed a lot on the car, which allowed us to make progress, but there are still areas where we can do better."
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Oliver Berman: For me, a perfect storm has formed.
For Haas, sprint qualifying in Qatar ended in the second session, in which Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon posted the 12th and 15th fastest times. The drivers do not expect to score points in the sprint and view the short Saturday race as preparation for qualifying.
