Bearman qualifies 16th as Haas struggles to dial in new Canada package

Ollie Bearman qualified 16th for the Canadian Grand Prix at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on Saturday, one place ahead of team-mate Esteban Ocon, who was eliminated in Q1, as Haas struggled throughout the weekend to make its new aerodynamic package work on one of the calendar’s bumpiest tracks.

The team arrived in Montreal with new sidepods and a revised floor designed to improve airflow stability beneath the VF-26 and generate additional downforce. Instead of unlocking straightforward performance gains, the update made the car significantly harder to drive, leaving Bearman and the engineering crew chasing a workable set-up across every session.

“We’ve been chasing our tail all weekend really, it’s been really challenging,” Bearman said. “We haven’t been able to find a solution that’s worked.”

The difficulties were severe enough that Bearman’s car was pulled from parc ferme before the sprint race to allow set-up changes, forcing him to start from the pitlane. He described qualifying as the first moment all weekend when he felt able to push the car to its limits — only for new issues to emerge immediately.

“In the qualifying we were in a much better window and I was much happier with the car. But it’s been the first time that I actually pushed a braking zone or went to the limit in a traction zone all weekend,” he said. “I could actually finally lean on the car and now we’re uncovering new problems. For example, I was having so many issues with front locking as I started to push. And that’s stuff that I’m sure the others found out in FP1. But in FP1 we were so far out that we were not able to push the car at all.”

The particular character of the Montreal circuit compounded the team’s problems. Bearman explained that the circuit’s bumps and kerbs made it almost impossible to find a suspension compromise that delivered both drivability and lap time.

“The performance is there but the characteristics of the car have become really challenging,” he said. “I was literally fighting to even see the corners with the amount of bumps that I was feeling. When we try and run the car in a way that’s good for drivability, then the entries become really challenging. And when we stiffen it up to make it better, it’s then impossible to find confidence. So we’re kind of balancing that knife edge.”

Bearman confirmed that the decision to sacrifice his sprint race grid position was made on the basis of data gathered during Friday’s sprint qualifying, with the team hoping a set-up reset would put the car in a better operating window for the remainder of the weekend.