Bearman blamed Haas slick-tire call for lost points
NXTbets Pro | Published On: October 6, 2026
Bearman tyre call
Haas split its strategy in a wet Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang, and Oliver Bearman said the move cost him a chance at points. The team put Bearman on slick tyres even though he wanted to start on intermediates, while Esteban Ocon went out on intermediates. Bearman said Haas made the call at the last minute and did so without telling him it was splitting strategies. That left him trying to manage a choice he did not want. Instead, he felt the team left him exposed to the wrong side of the gamble from the start, with Bearman believing he should have been given the more normal strategy as the lead car ahead of Ocon. He said Haas should have taken the risk with the second car instead, a view that put the spotlight on the order of the team’s own decisions as much as on the tyres themselves. In Bearman’s telling, the problem was not just that Haas went different directions with its two cars. It was that the split came late, arrived without warning and forced him onto the less favorable option when he had already asked for the safer one.
Bearman frustration
Bearman said the slick tyre choice “totally screwed” his race, and he described the consequences in clear terms. The decision left him far behind the midfield, and he said the gap grew to 40 seconds after a safety car. Bearman’s complaint was direct because he felt the team had put the wrong driver on the riskier side of the strategy. He believed the normal call should have gone to him, with the gamble saved for Ocon. That is the kind of judgment that often gets made inside a team on the fly, but Bearman made it plain that he thought Haas had reversed the logic of the situation. He did not frame it as bad luck. He framed it as a decision that should have gone the other way. The result was a race he could never really recover from once the tyres were chosen. Bearman said the car had strong pace and was quick enough to fight for points once it was on the right tyres. That added to the frustration because he did not sound like a driver blaming the car itself. He sounded like a driver who felt the team had taken the race out of his hands before the field had settled into the right rhythm.
Bearman points
The final result showed how much ground Bearman lost to the tyre call. He finished 14th, one place ahead of Ocon in 15th, but the position sheet did little to soften his view of what might have been possible. Bearman believed Haas had a real chance to fight for points if it had made a different call. That judgment came from the pace he said the car had once the team got it onto the right tyres. In his view, the speed was there. The strategy was the problem. The weekend at Sepang became a case study in how a split approach can help one side of a garage and hurt the other when the timing is wrong. Haas chose to divide the cars, Bearman wound up on the side he did not want and the result was a race spent looking back at what could have been. His comments also underlined the importance of communication inside the team. Bearman said Haas did not tell him it was splitting strategies, and that detail sat at the center of his criticism. He was not only unhappy with the tyres, but with the way the call was handled and the position it put him in. For Bearman, the point was simple. Haas had the pace to do better, and a different tyre decision could have opened the door to the points battle he felt was there.
