Haas entered the 2026 Formula 1 season with ambitious objectives after making substantial progress under team principal Ayao Komatsu, but its promising start has given way to a five-race points drought. The American team remains seventh in the Constructors’ Championship with 21 points, yet its ability to defend that position may depend heavily on the next major VF-26 upgrade. Oliver Bearman has delivered 18 of the team’s 21 points and produced Haas’s standout result with fifth place at the Chinese Grand Prix. However, neither Oliver Bearman nor Esteban Ocon has scored since Monaco, leaving the team under growing pressure from Audi and an improving Aston Martin.
Ayao Komatsu has transformed Haas since taking charge
Haas arrived in 2026 following several difficult seasons, with the lowest point coming in 2023. Ayao Komatsu was appointed team principal in January 2024 as Guenther Steiner’s successor and has since guided the American operation back towards a respectable level of competitiveness. Haas collected 58 points and finished seventh in the 2024 Constructors’ Championship. Although it dropped to eighth the following year, the team increased its total to 79 points in 2025, underlining the scale of the progress achieved during Ayao Komatsu’s first two seasons in charge.
The team was aware that Formula 1’s new technical regulations would make 2026 difficult, but it had no intention of wasting the work completed during the previous 24 months. Esteban Ocon even suggested before the season that Haas had the potential to become a dangerous midfield opponent if the VF-26 proved competitive.
Haas began 2026 with an aggressive upgrade programme
Haas therefore started the season without holding anything back. At the opening round in Australia, the team introduced what would become the largest upgrade package approved for the first half of its campaign. That early effort helped Haas score points at five of the opening six Grands Prix. Oliver Bearman earned six points with seventh place in Australia before collecting another 11 during the Chinese Grand Prix weekend through eighth in the Sprint and fifth in the main race. Updates continued to arrive throughout the opening half of the season. Haas introduced at least some new components at every round, although the scale of each package gradually decreased as the championship progressed.
That reduction in development appears to have affected the VF-26’s competitiveness. Haas has failed to score at the last five Grands Prix, from Barcelona through to Hungary, leaving the team with 21 points and seventh place in the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship. The hard work has therefore paid off on most occasions, but not throughout the entire first half of the season.
Haas drivers await the next major VF-26 upgrade
There is no immediate reason for panic inside the team. Haas remains in the position it is realistically attempting to defend, and both drivers are waiting for the next substantial development package.
The update is expected during the opening rounds after the summer break and could provide the performance step required to return the VF-26 to the points. After a particularly difficult Hungarian Grand Prix, Oliver Bearman admitted that he had lost confidence in the car, while Esteban Ocon stressed the need for more performance from the forthcoming developments. Haas had already brought revised components to Canada and further updates later in the first half of the year, but its rivals have developed at a faster rate. The next package must therefore do more than deliver an isolated gain; it needs to help the car recover the midfield competitiveness it displayed during the opening races.
Chinese Grand Prix remains Haas’s 2026 highlight
The Chinese Grand Prix was unquestionably Haas’s strongest and most important event of the season so far. Oliver Bearman finished eighth in the Sprint before producing an excellent fifth place in Sunday’s race, placing the British driver back in the spotlight. Oliver Bearman has shown that he can deliver strong results when the car gives him the opportunity. His points advantage over Esteban Ocon stands at 18–3, while he has also led their qualifying and race head-to-head contests during the first half of the year.
The young British driver has produced an impressive calling card for any team that may be interested in his services for the 2027 championship. His performances are particularly significant because former junior rivals such as Kimi Antonelli and Isack Hadjar are already competing near the front of the grid. Oliver Bearman currently sits 13th in the Formula 1 driver standings, and his results remain the main reason Haas holds seventh place in the Teams’ Championship.
What is Haas’s long-term Formula 1 potential?
Although Haas has competed in Formula 1 since 2016, it has rarely performed strongly enough to consider challenging consistently for a place among the championship’s top five teams.
For an operation of Haas’s size and resources, finishing sixth or seventh would represent a highly respectable result. That is the level the team is currently attempting to achieve, and success would provide further evidence of the excellent work completed by Ayao Komatsu.
Haas remains the smallest operation on the Formula 1 grid and does not possess the same financial, technical or personnel resources as many of its rivals. Its strong start to 2026 therefore demonstrated how effectively the team used the package it had available. The challenge is maintaining that level across a full season while larger competitors continue to introduce upgrades. Haas’s current decline illustrates how quickly a midfield team can fall backwards when the development race accelerates.
Audi and Aston Martin threaten Haas’s seventh place
Seventh place remains an achievable objective, but having Audi and Aston Martin immediately behind is no guarantee of success.
Audi must continue improving if it is to demonstrate that its long-term ambition of fighting for the world championship is more than a distant dream. Aston Martin, meanwhile, is attempting to recover from a poor start and could become one of the surprises of the second half of the season.
The Silverstone team has already shown signs of progress, with Fernando Alonso backing the Aston Martin AMR26B to deliver further gains. Additional developments could make it significantly more difficult for Haas to retain its current championship position.
Haas will therefore need to introduce a convincing upgrade between the Dutch and Azerbaijan Grands Prix. Those events form part of a decisive sequence after the summer break, with the complete order available in the 2026 Formula 1 calendar.
The American team’s prospects may depend on whether that package restores the VF-26’s early-season competitiveness. Haas has already shown that hard work can produce results, but the next upgrade could determine whether its promising 2026 campaign ends with seventh place or another slide down the midfield order.
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