Haas came to Zandvoort already scrapping for relevance and left with nothing at all. Both cars retired, both drivers shrugged, and the team’s excuse-generator worked overtime. Calling it ‘a really horrible weekend’ is generous. It was a car park with a pit lane attached.
Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon didn’t just fail to score, they didn’t even both make it to the chequered flag, and neither result cost Haas anything in the championship because they were nowhere near the points anyway. That’s the real story here. This isn’t a team having a bad day. It’s a team that has been off the pace since Monaco and is now bleeding reliability on top of performance.
Bearman’s Race Lasted One Lap, Sort Of
Bearman’s afternoon was over almost before it started. After Max Verstappen’s crash triggered a red flag, cars lined up for a formation lap restart, and that’s when Bearman’s engine simply switched off. He never got to properly race at all.
“We had a good start and a good first lap, and then of course the red flag came out. After that, the engine turned off on the formation lap, and because we haven’t had any time with the car yet, we’re not entirely sure what the issue was. On my side, I felt a total switch-off, which is a shame. It’s been a really horrible weekend, not the one we wanted to come back to, but we have some updates coming next week, and I really hope they can better our performance.” – Oliver Bearman
Bearman had already been knocked out in SQ1 and Q1 before the race even began, so Zandvoort was a write-off from Friday onward. This marks his fourth DNF of the season, a number that should be setting off alarm bells inside the Haas garage rather than being filed under bad luck.
Ocon’s PU Gives Up Mid-Race
Esteban Ocon at least got a proper look at the race before his power unit called it quits. He kept going deep into the Grand Prix, gathering data that will presumably be studied hard this week, before his stricken car triggered a Virtual Safety Car that reshuffled the closing laps for everyone else.
“We haven’t had any reliability issues this year, this is the first one, and we think it’s related to the PU, but we’ll need to look into it first to properly understand. Both cars had issues, so neither of us finished the race, but it wasn’t going to change the world as we weren’t in point scoring positions anyway.” – Esteban Ocon
It was Ocon’s first non-finish of the season, which in isolation sounds fine. Paired with Bearman’s fourth, it stops looking like coincidence and starts looking like a pattern nobody at Haas wants to name out loud yet.
The Bigger Problem: This Team Is Sliding Backwards
Haas last touched the car with a proper upgrade back in Canada, and those parts simply didn’t deliver. Since then the team has drifted from fighting for points to fighting off Williams and Aston Martin for scraps. That’s not a small regression, that’s a team going the wrong direction while half the grid moves forward.
Haas currently sit seventh in the constructors’ standings with 21 points, but Audi are breathing down their neck in eighth with 16, having scored in four consecutive Grands Prix. If that trend continues, Monza could be the race where Haas gets overtaken not on track, but on a spreadsheet, which is arguably worse.
Komatsu Finds a Silver Lining Nobody Asked For
Team boss Ayao Komatsu, as reported by Formula1.com, admitted the weekend was hard to swallow but still managed to dig out a positive, because that’s what team principals are paid to do even when there’s nothing much to celebrate.
“It’s very disappointing to finish the weekend on a double DNF with PU failures, so we need to look into it. It’s a shame, as Ollie virtually had no race, and with Esteban, we struggled a bit more in the race than in Qualifying. In terms of trackside, I think what we got out of the car, before the failures, is what we had. The pit stops were very good, and with Esteban’s stop we did our quickest of the season. That’s the positive, so I hope when we get a slightly faster car, we can make use of it.” – Ayao Komatsu
A quick pit stop is a nice consolation prize, but it doesn’t put points on the board and it certainly doesn’t fix an engine that switches itself off on a formation lap. Haas insist upgrades are coming for Monza, which is the same promise every struggling team makes this time of year. Whether the parts actually arrive with the performance gain attached is another matter entirely.
Monza Just Got a Lot More Important
With Audi closing fast and Haas’s reliability now suddenly in question, the Italian Grand Prix weekend has turned into more than just another midfield scrap. It’s a test of whether Haas can stop the bleeding before Audi turns a five point gap into an overtake. For a team that spent the early part of the season punching above its weight, that would be a brutal way to end the summer.
You can catch up on all the drama from Zandvoort, including Verstappen’s crash that triggered the red flag and Williams somehow crashing into themselves again, before turning attention to Monza.
The Cynic’s Verdict
Haas will call this a blip. The numbers say otherwise. Two DNFs, one team, zero points, and a rival closing in from below. Updates are promised, positives are cited, and the usual PR machinery is doing its job. But a double retirement with engine and power unit failures isn’t misfortune, it’s a warning shot. Monza will tell us whether anyone at Haas was actually listening.
