One F1 team's major Canada upgrade package has left it "chasing our tails"

Ollie Bearman admits the Canadian Grand Prix has been challenging for his Haas Formula 1 team, as it tries to optimise a significant upgrade package.

The Haas driver qualified 15th for Saturday’s sprint, but he wasn’t comfortable with the car.

The team thus opted to drop out of parc ferme, make changes, and start him from the pitlane.

Having finished 18th in the sprint, he then took 16th in the main qualifying as the team continued to chase the optimum setup.

His team-mate Esteban Ocon ran the earlier spec before switching to the upgrade package for Saturday’s qualifying session.

“We've been chasing our tail all weekend, really,” said Ollie Bearman when asked by Crash.net about progress.

“It's been really, really challenging. Haven't been able to find a solution that's worked.

“To be honest, in the qualifying we were in a much better window, and I was much happy with the car, but it's been the first time that I actually pushed the braking zone or went to the limit in a traction zone all weekend, because 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 that 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.”

Bearman confirmed that dropping out of the sprint parc ferme was a result of adjusting set-up rather than backtracking on any elements of the upgrade package.

“No, the parts have remained the same all weekend on my side,” he said. “Esteban only fitted the new package this afternoon.

“But on my side, I've been running it all weekend, trying to figure it out, make it work, find a better solution. And this morning was just about trying to put the car in a better window, based on what we found from day one.”

He added: “The performance is there, but it's just the characteristics of the car have become really challenging, and the way that we tried to run the car, especially this morning, was so tough.

“It's probably best for ultimate lap time, but there's so many bumps and kerbs round here. I was literally fighting to even see the corners, with the amount of bumps that I was feeling.

"So it's been really tough. 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.”

Ocon, meanwhile, faced the difficult challenge of going straight into main qualifying with the new package, and the Frenchman had to settle for 17th on the grid.

“To have the car just before qualifying, and to do three or four laps to get used to everything, it's already difficult on the sprint quali, but that made it really, really tricky,” he said.

“It's completely different optimisation. You need to throw the lap, the speeds you carry in different parts of the corners are completely different. I could brake later, there was a bit less front end mid-corner, but you could get different speeds at different points.

“So by the time I figured it out it was the last lap of quali, I had to over-push it, and it didn't really go our way, unfortunately. That's how it is.”