Bearman believes Haas ‘in the fight’ after strong Friday in Baku

Ollie Bearman claimed “we look to be in the fight” after finishing fifth fastest in Free Practice 2 for Haas at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Bearman ended Friday’s FP2 session behind only the Ferrari and Mercedes drivers, with a time 0.598s off Lewis Hamilton’s benchmark, but set on the medium compound rather than the softs.

With Pirelli bringing the softest compound in its range, the C6, to Baku, it is expected that teams could elect to run the medium rubber in Qualifying to ensure the tyre can last the lap with minimal drop off.

“On the face of it, the lap time was very good,” said Bearman. “We’ve had a good car, honestly, all day. We were struggling a bit with top speed in FP1, but we’ve managed to improve that a bit in FP2, and we look to be in the fight.”

Since scoring points at three of the opening four weekends, Bearman has only registered once in the subsequent 12 – this coming at Zandvoort when he finished in sixth.

Asked of his points-scoring potential, Bearman added: “I hope so. I had a good feeling with the car, which is always the most important thing.

“I was struggling with a few issues out there – the brakes were not the best. We’ve got some work to do overnight to make sure we get it all together for Qualifying.”

In the sister car, Esteban Ocon backed up Bearman’s pace, setting the eighth fastest time, three-tenths back on his team mate.

“The car was behaving pretty decently today,” said the Frenchman. “From FP1 really, we saw that the grip was very decent. Now, we’ve tested a lot of different things across the cars, so we need to choose what is the best out there that we have to go with tomorrow. It’s not going to be easy to take the best choice.

“There are still some areas that we are lacking, so we need to look at that. But in corners, I think that we are pretty decent.”