There was disappointment, but also some positives, for Oliver Bearman at the Miami Grand Prix, where the British Haas driver finished 11th in what was a very closely fought race. It was the first time in the 2026 Formula 1 season that Haas failed to secure a top-10 finish, despite coming extremely close to scoring points at its home Grand Prix in the United States.
Esteban Ocon finished just behind his teammate in 13th place, ahead of Gabriel Bortoleto, in a result that saw Haas lose ground in the Constructors’ Championship standings. The American team dropped from 4th to 6th place, partly due to strong results from rivals, including Max Verstappen finishing 5th and Franco Colapinto securing 7th, which also marked the Alpine driver’s first top-10 finish of the season.
A missed top-10, but not a complete disappointment
While Haas narrowly missed out on points, Oliver Bearman admitted that the weekend was only partially disappointing, especially given that the team did not bring any upgrades to Miami. The 20-year-old driver will now look ahead to the Canadian Grand Prix with the aim of bouncing back.
“It was a really close fight,” said Oliver Bearman. “I’m a bit disappointed, but as I said earlier this weekend, we maybe expected a more difficult race because we didn’t bring any upgrades to the car. That said, I think we can be happy with our performance because we came very close to the points, but unfortunately not close enough.”
“The race didn’t really go our way, we had a retirement ahead of us and I also lost positions on the first lap. However, with the upgrades we will bring to the next race in Montreal, we hope to be more competitive,” he added.
What needs to be analysed
Esteban Ocon also highlighted several key areas that the team needs to review with the engineers, particularly after a critical phase of the race where performance dropped off.
“We were trying to have a good race, but unfortunately after the pit stop it wasn’t really the same anymore, so we need to analyse what happened,” said Ocon. “I think it would have been difficult to score points anyway because we were missing a bit of pace and it was quite tricky to stay consistent and find a good rhythm.”
“We had some tyre degradation because we were pushing quite hard. Still, there are a lot of positives to take and many lessons to learn from this weekend. Now we focus on Montreal and we look forward to seeing what we can do there,” he concluded.
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