After the unpleasant surprise in Australia, where Haas realized it had serious bouncing issues on high-speed sections that limited the car’s ability to generate aerodynamic load, the American outfit managed to take a first step forward already in China, securing its first points of the 2025 Formula 1 season.
This was thanks to a meticulous job in understanding the car, which began to unlock part of the potential the team had glimpsed over the winter following some aggressive changes to the project. Helping them as well was the newly laid asphalt in China, which was very smooth and lacked major bumps, allowing the car to be lowered and gain aerodynamic load through high-speed corners.
In Japan, another circuit that could have severely tested the VF-25 due to its many medium- and high-speed corners, encouraging signs arrived nonetheless, with a second consecutive top 10 courtesy of Oliver Bearman. At Suzuka, Haas arrived with a floor built in record time, based on lessons learned in Melbourne and Shanghai.
When the VF-25 is able to run low and keep bouncing under control, it can genuinely compete with its rivals in fast sections — as evidenced by the excellent sector times in the first part of the lap — although some compromises still remain.
In Australia, low-speed corners were sacrificed in an attempt to make up for shortcomings in high downforce areas, where up to four tenths could be lost in a single turn. Even at Suzuka, the team had to find a certain balance over the lap, with most of the time lost coming in medium- and low-speed corners compared to other midfield teams.
Oliver Bearman finished tenth in both qualifying and the race, although the gap to Racing Bulls and Williams widened, reaching 14 seconds — much more than the two-tenths lost over a single lap. Interestingly, nine of those 14 seconds were accumulated in the final ten laps, when the Briton’s pace dropped off by several tenths.
Esteban Ocon’s weekend was far more complex: it’s worth noting that the two Haas drivers are currently splitting setup duties to gather as much data as possible, as already happened in Australia and China. In Shanghai, the Frenchman made a complete setup change after the sprint race, resulting in a clear improvement that made him the best among the midfield.
During the first free practice session in Suzuka, Esteban Ocon ran with the old specification to allow for a direct comparison with Oliver Bearman, who was already using the new one. The question raised by both Team Principal Ayao Komatsu and Esteban Ocon himself is whether the French driver was able to fully exploit the potential of the new floor, which was then installed on his car for the remainder of the weekend.
“The data is clear, the new floor works, so we don’t understand what didn’t work for Esteban. It’s possible there’s something we’re not able to measure yet, but at the moment we haven’t found anything,” said Komatsu.
And speaking of the floor, there’s another detail: it wasn’t tested or validated before being produced. After the first Grands Prix, Haas decided to act swiftly, as Suzuka was considered one of those circuits that could expose the VF-25’s weaknesses — much like Jeddah could in two weeks’ time.
“We couldn’t come here with the same car from Melbourne and just hope. So, we wanted to have the maximum possible control. It was purely a risk management decision,” explained Team Principal Komatsu, before outlining how they accelerated the timeline to address the issues seen in Australia.
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