Bearman concedes Haas has slipped to F1's 10th-best team as Monza updates arrive

Oliver Bearman has openly acknowledged that Haas has become Formula 1’s 10th-best team in 2026, with the British driver admitting rivals have overtaken the American outfit after a promising start to the season. Speaking ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, Bearman said the situation “really hurts” as the team prepares to bring updates to Monza.

Haas began the 2026 campaign with genuine momentum, scoring points in each of the opening three races and collecting a fifth-place finish for Bearman at the Chinese Grand Prix. But as the season has progressed, the team has been caught and passed by midfield rivals including Alpine and Racing Bulls, who have developed their cars at a faster rate.

“Quite frankly, we’ve been overtaken right now,” Bearman said. “We are the 10th-best team. It really hurts, myself and all the others. We were working really hard to make that not be the case, but that’s the reality of where we are right now.”

The team’s last points finish came at the Monaco Grand Prix in June, when Esteban Ocon brought his car home in ninth. Since then, Haas has struggled with an inconsistent VF-26 that has made it difficult to extract maximum performance on race weekends.

Bearman drew a direct contrast with 2025, when Haas managed to improve its relative performance as the year went on. “2026 is more of what we’ve seen from Haas in the past,” he said, “of starting incredibly strong with a really quick car as a base, but not being able to improve like the others have.”

Team principal Ayao Komatsu pointed to the Montreal upgrade package as a partial source of the problems, acknowledging that while some elements worked, others made the car harder to drive. “Some bits made the car faster, but some bits wasn’t perfect. Actually, it made the drivability more difficult as well,” he said.

Despite the setback, Komatsu insisted Haas will not abandon the 2026 season to focus entirely on 2027. He framed the remainder of the year as an opportunity to demonstrate the team’s development capabilities. “We’ve got to prove to ourselves that we can identify the key issues, we can solve the issues and then put it on the car to move forward,” he said, pointing to the technical progress made over the previous two seasons as evidence the team has the personnel to respond.

Updates are expected to arrive at Monza, with Komatsu expressing confidence that the squad can close the gap to the midfield pack in the coming rounds.