Ocon admits Haas struggled with ‘quite a few things’ in Saudi Arabia while Bearman takes positives from first triple header

Neither Haas driver could climb up into the points on Sunday in Jeddah, with Ollie Bearman finishing 13th and Esteban Ocon in P14. Both admitted to struggles in Saudi Arabia, with the team trying differing strategies in a bid to make something happen.

Alas, it did not go their way despite pitting Ocon at the end of the first lap when the Safety Car was called. That left the Frenchman 49 laps to survive on his hard compound tyres, but while he did so, he did not have the pace to hold onto a top-10 berth.

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“Here we struggled basically,” Ocon explained. “We tried something on strategy, we positioned ourselves quite into the points quite clearly, and if something would have happened we would have consolidated that position.

“But unfortunately, that wasn’t enough today, we just struggled with quite a few things. It is one more race with knowledge and hopefully that will serve us for the next one.”

Ocon played the team game to cede position to Bearman towards the end of the race, with the rookie on much fresher tyres. But he couldn’t climb any higher than 13th, despite some entertaining duels with Jack Doohan’s Alpine.

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“[I was] struggling a fair bit in that first stint with the balance so yeah, I wasn’t able to do much today out there,” Bearman said.

“It was close with [Racing Bulls] but we couldn’t quite match their pace and I had to get off that medium tyre early, plus it’s very tough to overtake and to follow in Sector 1.”

But while Saudi Arabia might not have concluded the triple header as Haas would have liked, both drivers found positives to take from the three races in which they scored a combined six points.

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“The triple header’s been positive, we have been fighting for the points there or thereabouts for three races now and three very different tracks, so that is positive, and we have a bit to analyse from this weekend,” Bearman added.