Overview
- Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu confirmed Saturday that an operational setup mistake was applied to Oliver Bearman’s car in FP2, leaving the session unusable for gathering setup data.
- The wrong setup meant Bearman effectively missed FP2 reference laps, which left him with only two short ‘push’ laps in FP3 after the issue was corrected.
- High tyre degradation at Sepang reduced each new soft tyre to roughly one effective flying lap, so the lost FP2 running sharply limited Bearman’s chance to tune the car for qualifying.
- In qualifying Bearman suffered a heavy front‑left lock‑up at turn one, said he lacked confidence, and was knocked out in Q1 in 18th place while emphasising the fault lay with missed processes rather than one person.
- Haas says it will review and fix procedural failures after the error, with Bearman noting the mistake cost him recovery time on his first visit to Sepang and reduced the weekend’s true performance potential.