Haas Team Principal Ayao Komatsu isn’t concerned by rookie Oliver Bearman’s limited qualifying prep during Formula 1 pre-season testing thanks to the prowess he showed in 2024.
Bearman is one of five classified rookies heading into 2025 but the 19-year-old Briton already has three GP starts under his belt.
In 2024, Bearman raced for Ferrari in Saudi Arabia as Carlos Sainz underwent treatment for appendicitis and deputised for Kevin Magnussen at Haas in Baku and Interlagos.
Those three qualifying sessions showed Komatsu all he needed in terms of Bearman’s qualifying readiness, which is why he isn’t worried that Haas’ typical testing programme focussed almost entirely on high fuel, long mileage stints.
“You saw him in qualifying last year,” Komatsu told select media including Motorsport Week.
“I don’t think he did badly. Back then he out-qualified Nico [Hulkenberg].
“Interlagos, Sprint weekend, FP1, then qualifying, he out-qualified Nico as well.
I don’t treat him as a rookie in that sense.”
True enough, when Bearman jumped into the Ferrari SF-24 at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit last year, he narrowly missed out on making Q3 after just an hour of practice to get up to speed.
In Baku, Bearman qualified 11th again, this time for Haas and two places ahead of the highly-regarded one lap specialist Hulkenberg and he was able to thwart the experienced German again over a single lap in Brazil.
Bearman ‘impatient’ to unlock Haas’ one-lap potential
Bearman admitted during testing amid his programme of high-fuel running that he is getting “impatient” with regards to unlocking Haas’ one-lap potential in Melbourne.
“I’m a little impatient and want to go for it as soon as possible but I understand that this running is very important and you know this kind of strategy of using all of these laps and doing as many laps as we can really worked for the team last year and I hope it does the same again,” he said.
“Yeah as the run goes down and we always put a new set [of tyres] on I’m really excited to see what the car can do.”
Why Haas doesn’t focus on low-fuel testing miles
Haas’ tactic of high fuel, high mileage during testing is a tactic that paid dividends before.
As Bearman said, in 2024 it helped Haas develop a car adept at tyre management, something its 2023 predecessor was catastrophically bad at.
Continuing with that methodology in this year’s pre-season testing, Komatsu explained its advantages.
“We just focused on getting answers that you cannot get during a race weekend,” he said.
“[On] race weekend you never have two sets of the same tyre compound.
“You do low, low, high, then low, low, high, then low, low, then qualifying.
“It’s almost impossible to get answers on some test items that have a certain influence on tyre degradation and high fuel management.
“That’s what we focused on.”
READ MORE – Why Haas isn’t treating Oliver Bearman like a ‘normal rookie’ in F1 2025
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