(Motorsport-Total.com) – Haas driver Oliver Bearman has praised Ferrari’s openness and support in making the best use of the new powertrains. Since Formula 1 moved to the current regulations with a stronger focus on electrical power, energy management has become a decisive factor for lap times.
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Teams must find the perfect balance: when is energy released and when do they lift off? Mercedes seems to have mastered this to perfection – at the Australian Grand Prix, the team secured pole position with eight-tenths of a second lead over Red Bull and Ferrari. The fastest Mercedes customer, Oscar Piastri in the McLaren, was already 0,862 seconds behind.
Williams team principal James Vowles admitted bluntly: “What Mercedes is doing with the power unit caught us off guard.” McLaren boss Andrea Stella hinted that there “could be systemic factors that a customer team cannot control.”
Bearman: “Ferrari is incredibly open”
Asked how Haas learns from Ferrari in this context, Bearman replies: “I have to say that Ferrari has been incredibly open and helpful regarding the deployment strategy. They give us as much information as possible to support us. I think our situation with Ferrari is different from the one between McLaren and Mercedes.”
Nevertheless, there are natural limits: “They are extremely cooperative, but of course there is a bigger difference between our cars. In terms of qualifying, they are basically one session ahead of us. Their time in the third practice session almost matched our qualifying time, if that makes sense.”
Bearman was the faster Haas driver in qualifying and took twelfth on the grid – 0,954 seconds behind the fastest Ferrari and 0,642 seconds slower than the Ferrari reference from the third free practice.
The domino effect on lap time
“As the lap time increases, the energy requirements change massively,” the Briton continues. “The amount of lift-and-coast, the gear selection – you have to anticipate all of that and analyze it with a view to qualifying. A corner that is flat out for them might require a short lift, a braking maneuver, or a downshift for us. We then have to adapt that in our own way.”
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In Australia, Haas went through this process during the weekend. “Now we have two or three core points. We know that we will be slower in certain corners or need a lower gear. And if you are slower at the apex, you logically have to call up more power at the exit. That’s a big domino effect. This information is extremely useful for the upcoming races.”
Focus in Shanghai: Main race instead of sprint points?
Asked about the GPS data and the delta to Ferrari, Bearman says: “We already learned in Australia. Turn 5 was such an example: Ferrari went flat out there from the start, while for us it took until the end of the second or even third practice. You have to change the approach strategically. As an engineering group, we are already identifying corners where we expect differences just by looking at the track layout.”
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For the upcoming weekend in Shanghai, however, Bearman remains realistic. Since the top teams (Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, and McLaren) usually take the first eight places – and thus the points – in the sprint among themselves, the focus is on Sunday.
“The top four teams seem to be racing in a league of their own,” says the 20-year-old. “Under normal circumstances, they take the first eight places, and only those get points. Of course, a good sprint qualifying is important, but the priority for us is the main race. That’s where the probability of points is highest.”
His conclusion before the Chinese Grand Prix: “The findings from Australia help us. We started at 95 percent in the first practice there and didn’t have to change much. I hope that we get off on the right foot here again, put the car through a stress test in the sprint shootout, and then are fully there in the main qualifying.”
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