Haas boss Ayao Komatsu refused to apportion blame to either driver after Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon collided during the Formula 1 British Grand Prix.
The Kannapolis-based squad experienced a challenging outing at Silverstone, which culminated in a drop down to ninth place in the Constructors’ Championship.
Haas had brought a set of upgrades to the Northamptonshire-based Circuit, but were not able to maximise the VF-25’s potential to capitalise on the mixed conditions.
Bearman got through to Q3, but his 10-place grid drop for a red flag infringement in FP3 meant he started the wet-dry thriller in 18th, while Ocon lined up in 15th place.
In changeable conditions, the duo collided going into Brooklands on Lap 44 and executed a synchronised pirouette, finishing outside the points at the chequered flag.
Komatsu, however, deemed it a racing incident, absolving his drivers from any blame.
“Our drivers touching is the last thing that should happen,” Komatsu told media including Motorsport Week.
“But I looked at the onboard of both drivers, I spoke with them both, and for me it was a racing incident.”
The Japanese engineer instead shouldered the blame, citing that the reason the two came together was that the team had failed to optimise the race weekend.
“We executed a terrible race today,” he conceded. “We have to be better.
“We shouldn’t be starting from P14 and P18 where we’re then trying to force the result.
“We need to focus on executing three clean days on a race weekend and getting the result that our car deserves.
“Again though, if you look at how they ended up in that situation, the pitstop timings for that stop were correct, so we pitted the lead car first.
“Ollie then went off in a high-speed corner, and that’s why he was behind his team-mate when Esteban came out after his stop.
“As Ollie had hotter tyres than Esteban, he went for the overtake, but we shouldn’t have been in that position to start with. It just shouldn’t happen.”
Bearman and Ocon rue ‘frustrating’ British GP
Ocon, who was less at one with the upgraded VF-25 than his rookie team-mate, agreed that Haas must ensure it
Ocon had a torrid time driving the VF-25 despite the upgrade package and revealed that the team has a lot of work to do during its debriefing to ensure better execution on race weekends.
“It was a frustrating race,” he summarised. “We need to review so many things that have happened. There was a lot to review in that race.
“It wasn’t an easy one and not a fun one from inside the car. The car was also pretty difficult to drive the whole race. It was about trying to stay on track the whole race, so it wasn’t fun.”
Bearman, on the other hand, felt he had pace in hand to exploit at his home race, but lamented an incident-ridden weekend, augmented by his moment with Ocon.
“Yeah, it was a close moment. I need to review it with the team,” he said.
“I mean, it was messy. Of course, I had really warm tyres, everyone else had much cooler tyres and I had a lot more grip at that stage, but yeah, it was a mess.”
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