Komatsu turns the screw on Ocon as Bearman streak fuels Haas’ Vegas push
Haas rolls into Las Vegas with a spring in its step and a clear message from the top: Saturdays have to get better, for both cars. Team principal Ayao Komatsu says the “challenge” now is simple — convert their late-season momentum into two clean qualifying performances, not just one.
That subtext is hard to miss. Oliver Bearman is on the hottest run of any Haas driver in the team’s history, scoring in four straight grands prix and peaking with a career-best fourth in Mexico City. Esteban Ocon, meanwhile, has been stuck in the mud. A gritty ninth in Mexico while under the weather is his only points finish from the last six.
The contrast was stark again in Brazil. Ocon fell at the first qualifying hurdle, the team flipped the car set-up and rolled the dice with a pit-lane start. He hustled back to 12th on the road. Bearman? He banked another top-six. Ocon pointed to a puncture — “just one lap after Max” Verstappen’s — that arrived right as the race went green again, costing roughly 10 seconds at precisely the wrong moment.
“Extremely disappointed, really,” Ocon admitted after Interlagos. “It’s just no luck… but the positive we can take away is that the pace was okay. We would have been able to make progress.”
Komatsu can see it too: the race pace is there. The irritation is that Haas isn’t starting high enough to cash it in.
“Coming to Vegas off the back of another strong result, the team has great momentum, and we know what we’re fighting for,” he said. “With three races remaining, we haven’t changed our mindset or approach — we will attack each race at a time.
“Vegas is a challenging circuit with a very long straight, different from Interlagos. I think with our car’s characteristics, we can fight anywhere. The challenge is getting both drivers to perform, as Esteban, by his own admission, didn’t get the best out of it in qualifying last time, although his race pace was amazing. We need to get both drivers qualifying well to score with both cars, which 100 percent we can do.”
He’s not wrong about the stakes. Haas is locked in a four-way scrap with Racing Bulls, Aston Martin and Sauber for sixth in the Constructors’ Championship, with barely 20 points covering the lot with three to go. For a team of Haas’ size, that’s an eight-figure swing in prize money — the kind of margin that funds upgrades, hires headcount and pays for testing time in the wind tunnel. Every grid slot on Saturday evening in Vegas could be worth real money on Sunday night.
On to our third home race. Bright lights. Big fight. 🎰🇺🇸
Las Vegas, we’re ready.
— MoneyGram Haas F1 Team (@HaasF1Team)November 2025
That’s why Komatsu keeps hammering qualifying. Las Vegas is all about discipline and execution: long straights, heavy braking, and a car that has to live in a very tight operating window when the track temperature falls. A compromised set-up or scruffy out-lap sequence will bury you in the midfield, where even “amazing” race pace can mean spending 30 laps staring at a DRS train.
The positive for Haas? Bearman’s form has been clean and repeatable. He’s executing on Saturdays, then squeezing good tyre life and race rhythm out of a car that — on this run — looks fundamentally well-balanced. The risk? Relying on a rookie to carry the scoring load into the season’s decisive stretch isn’t a strategy anyone would choose. Ocon knows it.
“Yes, we started in the pit lane, but we had the puncture… exactly at the time where the race resumed,” he said of Brazil. “I would have finished in front of all those cars if that was not the case.”
Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, Komatsu’s line is clear: hit the ground running, get the set-up right, and make qualifying count. If Ocon resets his Saturdays and Bearman keeps his streak alive, Haas can turn its “great momentum” into the kind of double-score that swings a constructors’ fight. If not, it’s a long night on the Strip trying to roll sixes in traffic.
“We need to hit the ground running and focus on what we need to do,” Komatsu added. “Get the most out of the drivers. If we do that, the result will come.”
Third home race. Big lights. Bigger opportunity. The margin for error just shrank to Q2.
