Two KOs in one race
That Haas was going through a period of severe results crisis was known even before the Dutch Grand Prix, with the American team out of the points zone since Monaco. From the weekend in the Principality onwards, both Bearman and Ocon have always finished far from the top 10, but a double retirement had never occurred, as happened instead in Zandvoort. Both the British and the Frenchman had to raise the white flag due to technical problems, respectively in the first and second half of the race.
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Bearman: the ‘mystery’ to solve
Following the GP interruption due to Verstappen’s accident, Bearman had to stop his VF-26 during the formation lap, forcing the drivers to do another lap before the restart: “We had a good start and a good first lap, then obviously the red flag came. After that, the engine shut off during the formation lap and, since we haven’t had a chance to test the car yet, we are not entirely sure what the problem was, but from my side I felt a total lock-up, which is a shame. It was a really horrible weekend, not what we wanted to experience on our return, but updates will arrive next week and I really hope they can improve our performance”
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Who did take the restart regularly was instead Esteban Ocon, but the Frenchman also did not cross the finish line. The problem, in this case already certain, was found in the Ferrari power unit, with the technical KO ending the sequence of races completed from the opening GP in Australia to the one in Hungary: “This year we haven’t had reliability problems, this is the first, and we think it is related to the power unit, but we will have to investigate the matter further to fully understand it. Both cars had problems, so none of us finished the race, but it wouldn’t have changed anything since we were not in the points zone anyway. Updates will come, they are necessary, so we will see what the impact will be”. Complicating matters is also the gradual recovery of Audi in the Constructors’ standings, which thanks to Nico Hülkenberg’s 8th place will arrive at the next Italian GP in Monza 5 points behind the 7th place occupied by Haas.
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