‘The car is insane!’ – Bearman energised by ‘really competitive’ Haas showing in Abu Dhabi

Ollie Bearman was delighted with Haas’ performance on the opening day of action at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix as he was confidently in the mix in FP2, ending the session in fourth place.

The Briton previously endured an issue that impacted his running in FP1 – he lost power before his race engineer informed him that there was a “leak”, forcing him to slowly return to the pits and miss a chunk of the hour.

He was able to rejoin the action after a while, bolting on a set of medium tyres to take P8 just over two tenths adrift of Lando Norris’ benchmark time. However, the problem reared its head again and the team retired the car for the remainder of FP1, later confirming that it was caused by a sensor issue.

FP2, on the other hand, saw a much improved performance as he repeatedly set flying laps on soft tyres to finish P4. With everyone finding time in the cooler conditions, Norris extended his lead to 0.363s over his nearest challenger Max Verstappen, leaving Bearman four-tenths away.

The result nevertheless marked the end of a fantastic day for Haas, with the 20-year-old remarking over the radio to his race engineer: “Mate, the car is insane! I don’t know how it’s so good.”

After the session, he added: “We had a good car underneath us already in FP1 – I had a great feeling. The first run was a bit understeery but you could feel deep down that the car was wanting to go fast.

“In FP1, I didn’t get to do a lot of the session. We had a small issue on the car but I did one lap on the medium and we were really competitive. That’s really carried over to this afternoon but I think the key thing is it’s very tight out there.

“We’re four tenths away but five tenths puts you outside the top 10, so it’s going to be really important to optimise everything for tomorrow.”

The small margins separating the field saw Bearman running close to frontrunners like Mercedes’ George Russell, putting him in a good position to chase down his second top-five finish of the season.

He previously finished a high-flying fourth at the Mexican Grand Prix, but a DNF last time out in Qatar has left him targeting a strong Qualifying to return to the points, which could be crucial in Haas' battle to leapfrog Aston Martin for P7 in the Standings.

Asked whether FP2 has encouraged the team to focus more on their one-lap pace rather than longer runs, he replied: “Yeah, it has been the case for us that generally we’re a bit stronger in the race than we are in Qualifying. I think if we bias ourselves a bit towards Qualifying, it’s not going to be an issue regardless.”