Haas team boss Ayao Komatsu has delivered one of the bluntest assessments yet of Esteban Ocon’s turbulent first season with the American outfit, openly conceding that the Frenchman’s 2025 campaign fell short of expectations — and that frustration was shared across the garage.
Ocon arrived at Haas with a pedigree: a Grand Prix winner, a podium finisher, and a decade of Formula 1 experience.
Yet by season’s end, it was rookie team-mate Oliver Bearman who had the statistical upper hand, outscoring and outqualifying the veteran in a year that was supposed to be Ocon’s stabilising reset.
Instead, it became a rollercoaster of inconsistency, technical complaints, and mounting internal pressure. And Komatsu did not dance around the issue.
“If you purely look at the sporting result, without going to details, for sure nobody's satisfied with Esteban's sporting result last year, right?” he said, quoted by Motorsport.com.
“You know, he's a team-mate against a rookie. Yes, amazing rookie, but nonetheless, he's got 10 years of F1 under his belt. He's a race winner, he's a podium finisher. So we expected more from him.”
Not Just the Driver – But Not Just the Car Either
While Ocon frequently voiced discomfort with the car’s braking behaviour, Komatsu was clear that the blame could not be pinned solely on machinery. Nor, he insisted, could it be dumped entirely on the driver.
“And obviously, it's not totally his fault, it's 50-50, right? Sometimes it's the team, we couldn't give him the car that he was comfortable [with], especially in qualifying,” Komatsu explained.
“And then some circuits, that's got exaggerated much more than other circuits. Look at Baku, you know, he really wasn't happy with certain braking performance, then he was miles off in the qualifying pace. Yes, Baku happened to be one of Ollie’s strongest circuits, but we didn't expect Esteban's worst day to be so far off.”
“But again, there's not one reason, there's not just a driver, there's not just a team, and then each instance is different.
“So there's no common underlying factor, there's no [silver] bullet; it's just a process, how we work together to get the bottom of it so much quicker and then put things in place for next race.
“That’s the bit I feel we – all of us together, team and driver – didn't do it very well last year, because I really felt like we should have got on top of that quicker.”
Flashes of Speed, Snowball of Struggles
Ironically, the season finale in Abu Dhabi encapsulated Ocon’s paradox. After a dismal Friday, he rebounded to qualify in the top 10 and finish strongly — a turnaround Komatsu used as both praise and warning.
“Look at Abu Dhabi on Friday, he was completely off the pace, like four tenths off Ollie; Saturday, bang, he was on the pace,” the Haas chief explained.
©Haas
“Again, it's not just one big [silver] bullet, it's a few – I wouldn't say little things, but I could even say little things, few things that really trigger, let's say, a snowball effect.
"And then we’ve really got to get on top of those things quicker, because Esteban's potential is clear.
“If you look at Abu Dhabi, what he can do on Saturday, Sunday, coming off the back of a very poor Friday, that's the talent he has, that's the capability he has.
“And then we've got to harness that, we've got to make sure we use that, because we really need two drivers this year. I mean, we needed both of them last year, but we need more this year.”
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