Haas blames VF-26 inconsistency for 2026 slump

Haas says its biggest problem in 2026 is not its driver line-up but an unresolved VF-26 inconsistency that can leave one car behaving radically differently from the other despite carrying the same parts.

That matters because the raw comparison between Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon looks lopsided. Bearman leads Ocon 18 points to 3 in the standings, and also holds an 11-4 advantage in qualifying and 9-3 in races. But Bearman, Ocon and team principal Ayao Komatsu all argue those numbers have been distorted by swings in balance and downforce that can change from one session to the next.

Bearman said the intra-team fight “is not always a fair battle,” because one car can suddenly be missing “10 to 15 points of downforce.” He said the problem can hit either side of the garage and turn a weekend into “a sort of lottery,” adding that “from one day to the next, we can have changes in the balance of our car without expecting it.”

Ocon described the same pattern from the other side. He said Haas has repeatedly seen opposite behavior with “the same elements” on both cars, citing Spa and Budapest as examples. At one track, he said, his car could have more downforce than Bearman’s, only for the situation to reverse at the next event. “We could put the same parts on the car and suddenly end up with one car that works and another that does not,” he said.

That has left Haas chasing causes it still cannot fully explain. Komatsu said the team has solved some issues but not all of them. He pointed to Spa, where Ocon was within two tenths on Friday before losing confidence from Saturday onward even though “almost nothing” had been changed. Haas has also had to swap components to investigate unexplained differences, with similar searches for answers during weekends such as Barcelona and Austria.

Komatsu said those swings make it “very, very difficult” to judge the true picture between his drivers. When Ocon has a car that feels right, Komatsu said, he is close to Bearman. But when the balance disappears, the lap-time gap can explode immediately. That is why Haas does not see the points table alone as a clean reflection of performance.

Ocon has been the most blunt about the impact on his season. He said only Suzuka, Silverstone and Budapest felt “really normal,” and called it probably the toughest first half of a season he has experienced for car consistency. He insisted the drivers are not the issue, saying that if Haas gives either him or Bearman a car that works properly, they will extract the maximum from it.

Budapest stood out for precisely that reason. After weeks of fluctuating behavior, Ocon said Haas “found consistency” there, with a car that stayed healthy from Friday through Sunday and kept the same balance throughout the weekend. He out-qualified Bearman by two tenths in Q1 and finished ahead of him in the race, offering the team one of its clearest examples yet of what the VF-26 can do when its behavior stays stable.

For Haas, that leaves the real story of its season less about a simple driver pecking order and more about whether it can finally understand why one VF-26 can lose a chunk of performance without warning. Until that is fixed, the team’s slump and the Ocon-Bearman comparison will remain clouded by a car problem none of them believe they have fully solved.