‘A really horrible weekend’ for Bearman and Haas as they suffer double Dutch DNF

Haas had an afternoon to forget at Zandvoort, with both Ollie Bearman and Esteban Ocon parking up trackside to retire with technical issues.

Having qualified down the order, neither DNF cost the team a chance of points – but instead highlighted how many issues the team currently have to work on.

Bearman was the first to park up, at the end of the formation lap following the red flag restart called after Max Verstappen's crash out of Turn 14. That meant he completed just one racing lap in Zandvoort, and having also lost out in SQ1 and Q1, the British driver was left in a despondent mood.

“We had a good start and a good first lap, and then of course the red flag came out. After that, the engine turned off on the formation lap, and because we haven’t had any time with the car yet, we’re not entirely sure what the issue was,” he said afterwards.

“On my side, I felt a total switch-off, which is a shame. It’s been a really horrible weekend, not the one we wanted to come back to, but we have some updates coming next week, and I really hope they can better our performance.”

Haas last upgraded the car back in Canada, but those parts did not have the desired effect and instead the American team has tumbled down the order.

From fighting for points at the start of the season, they have fallen back into the clutches of Williams and Aston Martin, and seem some way off the pace of the top 10 right now.

Ocon at least completed most of the race, gathering data for the team before he too parked up – his stricken Haas sparking a Virtual Safety Car period that shook up the latter stages of the Grand Prix.

“We haven’t had any reliability issues this year, this is the first one, and we think it’s related to the PU, but we’ll need to look into it first to properly understand,” the Frenchman said.

“Both cars had issues, so neither of us finished the race, but it wasn’t going to change the world as we weren’t in point scoring positions anyway.”

This was Ocon’s first DNF of the season, while Bearman has now failed to finish four times. The team find themselves seventh in the standings, but Audi in eighth are closing fast having scored in the last four Grands Prix.

Haas face an increasingly tough fight to score points, with Racing Bulls, Alpine, Audi and now Aston Martin all battling hard in the midfield, but upgrades are coming for the next race in Monza.

Team boss Ayao Komatsu did find one positive though at the end of a difficult Dutch weekend.

“It’s very disappointing to finish the weekend on a double DNF with PU failures, so we need to look into it," he said. "It’s a shame, as Ollie virtually had no race, and with Esteban, we struggled a bit more in the race than in Qualifying. In terms of trackside, I think what we got out of the car – before the failures – is what we had.

"The pit stops were very good, and with Esteban’s stop we did our quickest of the season. That’s the positive, so I hope when we get a slightly faster car, we can make use of it.”