Esteban Ocon Shines in Miami Grand Prix Qualifying, Haas Seeks Consistency Improvement
Esteban Ocon, the French driver for the American squad Haas F1 Team, secured a spot in the final part of qualifying for Formula 1’s Miami Grand Prix. Despite this impressive achievement, he acknowledged that there is still work to be done to enhance the consistency of the VF-25 chassis.
Ocon’s Ninth Grid Position and Close Call with Charles Leclerc
Ocon placed his car ninth on the grid, narrowly missing Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda’s position and coming within 0.07s of Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari. This strong performance allows Haas to vie for points after losing Oliver Bearman’s sprint-race eighth due to a pitlane infringement.
Ocon praised the changes made by the Haas team between the sprint race and qualifying, stating that they had “overcome most of the issues” faced during Saturday’s shorter race. He felt that he had given his best, having qualified within a second – 0.620s – of Max Verstappen’s pole lap.
I think probably the best qualifying session of the year so far for us,” Ocon said. “We really turned the car around in terms of setup to try and improve from the issues we had in the sprint race.” He acknowledged that there were still some issues to overcome, but overall, he was pleased with the team’s efforts.
Set-up Window “Really Small” for Haas Team
When asked about Bearman’s run to the final grid slot, despite failing to clear Q1, Ocon pointed out that Haas was still grappling with moments of inconsistency with its car, even when the two cars were running on the same setup.
He explained that the range of finding the right setup was still “really small” but added that the team had fixes in the pipeline to address these issues. “I think my engineering team did an awesome job,” he said. “But this is what we need to work on, our consistency. The window of our car is really, really small.
Despite these challenges, Ocon expressed confidence in the team’s plans for the upcoming races. “We have some plans coming into the next races,” he said.
