Racing
© Spencer
Haas left qualifying for the 2026 Canadian Grand Prix with Ollie Bearman 16th and Esteban Ocon 17th after its new upgrade package turned the VF-26 into a car both drivers were still trying to understand by Saturday night.
That was the striking outcome in Montreal. The team believes the new aero package is generating load, but over the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve bumps and curbs it also created balance, braking and drivability problems that left Haas scrambling for a workable setup rather than unlocking a clear step forward.
Bearman at least dragged one car into Q2. He advanced from Q1 in 12th with a 1:14.449, then ended the session 16th with a 1:14.416. Ocon did not escape Q1 and qualified 17th with a 1:14.845 after debuting the updated package for grand prix qualifying.
The problems had started long before that. Haas’ only practice session on Friday was repeatedly interrupted by red flags, limiting evaluation time just as the team arrived with significant changes. Ocon also hit the wall and damaged his front wing, further reducing running, and Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu said after Sprint qualifying that the team had finished Friday with “more questions than answers.”
By Saturday morning, Haas was already changing direction. The team broke parc fermé on Bearman’s car before the 23-lap Sprint to try different setup solutions, forcing him to give up 15th on the grid and start from the pit lane. He finished 18th, while Ocon came through to 13th, but the extra experimentation still did not fully solve the underlying issues.
Bearman said the team had been “chasing our tail all weekend really” as it tried to get the package into the right operating window. The Haas driver said the update was a “double-edged sword” because “the performance is there but it's just the characteristics of the car have become really challenging.” He said qualifying was the first time he felt able to lean on the car, only for new problems to appear, especially front locking once he began attacking corner entry harder. Around Montreal, he said, Haas was “kind of balancing that knife edge.”
He described a car that became difficult whichever way Haas tried to tune it. If the team chased drivability, corner entry became troublesome. If it stiffened the car to recover performance, confidence disappeared. On a circuit packed with aggressive curbs and bumps, that left Bearman struggling not just for pace but for consistency and confidence.
Ocon reported a similar picture from the other side of the garage, but with even less time to adapt. He said the weekend had been “very difficult” and that the upgraded car felt very different to drive, making it hard to piece together a clean qualifying with only a handful of attack laps. He said Haas had finally found “a better balance in corners with a bit of confidence,” but that as soon as he pushed, he was locking the wheels “every time.”
Komatsu said Saturday at least gave Haas something concrete to work with. He said the team had confirmed that “the aero load is delivering,” while also starting to uncover the corner-specific issues triggered by the package. That leaves Haas with a more useful diagnosis than it had on Friday, but also with the bigger problem exposed: what was supposed to be an upgrade weekend became an exercise in understanding why neither the old direction nor the new one gave its drivers the confidence they needed.