Esteban Ocon expands on Haas doing better in F1 races than in qualifying, as he notes of small gap in the midfield leading to tight playing area.
The tight midfield battle in F1 2025 has made it difficult for every team to relax at any point of time. Even though Williams started well with good hold of points, Sauber has caught them after spring of good results. The likes of Haas and Visa Cash App RB along with Aston Martin are hovering around too.
Haas had a difficult first race where its weakness in high-speed was exposed. They brought updates to mitigate and it has worked in some way. However, their qualifying results have been blocking them to score more. Often they are left to push hard in a tight field.
They rely on strategy and better race pace to register good results. For now, Ocon doesn’t think there is a pattern in their performances, especially from qualifying to races. He feels their car is good on tyres, which helps them to use their strategy after low-key qualifying results.
“I don’t know if it is a pattern, it is not a given, that’s for sure,” said Ocon to media. “I think we do have a little bit of difficulties at the moment. In qualifying, we do seem to struggle more than the race for various different reasons which are quite obvious to us. There’s a bit of straightline speed, a bit of high-speed corner difficulties we face as well.
“And when we get to the race, nobody runs DRS and there is a matter of also tyre management in the high-speed corner, so things get closer and we are quite good at managing tyres. We have been strong on that in China, in Bahrain, in Austria and Canada, all the races where it was quite tough. That’s good but all the tracks where we were able to comeback were also the tracks where you have the chance to overtake.
“The tracks where it is going to be more difficult, if we start that far back, it is going to be tough, so we are working and trying to get more performance in qualifying. We will have some update to try to get performance and try to get more balance on where it should be on used tyre set in qualifying,” summed up Ocon, who notes that they are trying to improve their consistency.
The tight field makes it difficult to score all the time and then consistency matters if they are always in the position to score. “Yes, it’s a very good question because this is what we are trying to improve—our consistency in terms of performance,” continued Ocon. “The issue is how close the field is, especially in the midfield.
“One tenth can be three or four positions, or can make you go into Q2 or not, or can make you go into Q3. That’s the difficulty. A couple of years ago, you could be two or three tenths slower but still keep your position compared to one team or another. Now it really is about nailing the lap, nailing the set-up, and getting everything under control.
“If your car is not suiting the track well, you clearly have no chance in qualifying. You still have a chance in the race because it’s so close between everyone, but not in quali. That’s where the difficulties are. I think we have an idea, obviously I’m not going to go into details on that, but we will try our best to minimise that [high-speed] and to improve it. But I suspect we will not be able to catch the deficit towards the end of the year. We will minimise it, but not catch it,” summed up Ocon.
Here’s Esteban Ocon on Haas promise
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