Haas encountered reliability problems on the third day of testing in Barcelona, with some teams facing issues during today’s on-track running. Alarm bells have also rung at Ferrari, as Haas was forced to stop several times during the mileage completed in the Barcelona tests due to reliability-related concerns.
The American team took part in today’s activity with Oliver Bearman at the wheel. The British driver was forced to stop in the morning at Turn 2 due to a problem on his VF-26. Running resumed after a two-hour stop in the garage, but another interruption followed in the afternoon, with the cause appearing to be more serious on the second occasion.
Komatsu confirms Haas issue
Haas also allows Ferrari to gather important data on the power unit during these days of testing in Barcelona. However, the American team’s car suffered from reliability issues that could raise concerns in Maranello. After completing 157 laps on Monday, today saw two interruptions linked to problems that were not related to each other.
Ayao Komatsu, the team principal, confirmed the difficulties: “Unfortunately, in both the morning and afternoon sessions we had two reliability issues,” he explained. “I’m not worried about what we had this morning, while the one in the afternoon was a bit more serious and is clearly something we are working on and analysing exactly what happened and, of course, how to fix it.”
The issues encountered may not be directly linked to the Ferrari power unit, but today’s stoppages certainly prevented the team from collecting a greater amount of data in this area. “We aim to get on top of it as quickly as possible, but at least it happened relatively early in our overall pre-season programme,” Komatsu added.
The positive aspects of Haas’ day
Despite everything, the team remains positive about the work carried out on track compared to the first day: “We had Ollie in the car today and obviously we had gathered a lot of useful indications from our first day of testing here in Spain. We had solved so many issues since Monday, so when we were running on track today I could see a huge step forward compared to the first day.”
The team principal stated that the remaining programme has yet to be decided, as the team still needs to choose when to return to the track for the final day: “We’ll have to decide when we go back out, whether Thursday or Friday, that’s still to be confirmed. I continue to focus on the positives we’ve seen, particularly how we improved our operational performance from the first to the second day of testing.”
The second stoppage caused greater concern within the team, which will now spend the next few hours trying to understand the extent of the problem. Haas could take tomorrow off to analyse the data and identify the nature of the issue found during the afternoon session.
Bearman’s impressions
Oliver Bearman was at the wheel of the VF-26 today, returning to the track after the filming day at Fiorano: “It was great to be back in the car. Obviously we had already done a few laps at Fiorano over the weekend, where we were able to reach the maximum 200 kilometres, but today was my first experience with the car in dry conditions. That meant it was the first time I could really push it to the limit, at least with the set-up we used today.”
“You can definitely feel that the car is a bit more agile and responsive with the weight reduction compared to the previous regulations. I’m excited to see the car perform at its maximum again,” the British driver added. “We had a slightly interrupted day, but we still managed to get through some important items and learned a lot about this car. On one hand it’s a shame, but that’s the nature of these tests.”
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