Quick, what was the last memorable thing Haas did pn track? It’s ok, I’ll wait.

The original all-American team before the new American Team often fade as the second half of the season goes on, frontloading their development and moving on early to next year.

In a way, they’re almost like Formula 1’s Control Team. While the rest of their rivals are changing and remodelling parts of their car to gain 0.004 of a second, Haas are the placebo group, given a sugar pill that sort of works in Australia but by Zandvoort, everyone else is showing progress, while Ollie Bearman and Esteban Ocon are not.

Since entering F1 in 2016, Haas have scored more points in the second half of the season only three times. The pandemic 2020 season where they scored three points in total, 2024 (27 vs 29) and 2025. Maybe there were the signs that this was a year round outfit, especially as Bearman seemed to settle in and rattled off five points finishes in a row, including a stunning fourth in Mexico City last season. It was their best finish since Austria 2018 with Romain Grosjean behind the wheel.

I even broke out Google Sheets and made a graph.

So maybe there were the signs of a turnaround, but this season, Haas seems to be one of the teams that have taken a step backward compared to their rivals. Bearman and Ocon are there, and depending on what media reports you read, Ocon’s place in the team is seemingly always under review. Bearman seems to have stalled out and after some early points, hasn’t improved on his total of 18 since Monaco, which feels like it was four years ago.

Is he still the heir apparent to Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari? It should not be a question, really. Bearman has been part of the Ferrari Driving Academy for several years, and has been preparing for what feels like the inevitable for a while now. But without that statement result, and for Haas, that means the team’s first podium, might Ferrari think about a more proven quantity? 

After all, Ferrari committed to putting Charles Leclerc in the car after one season at Alfa Romeo. They knew he was the guy, they gave him a year to see how he could do, and he scored 10 points finishes, albeit nothing higher than sixth. Bearman’s best season had that scoring streak we talked about, where he bagged more points, but in fewer points finishes (nine). 

If Bearman’s window is closing or has closed, where does that leave him?

Haas has a business model where they try to buy as much as they can from Ferrari. The team has offices in Maranello, where if Ferrari sell it and it can go in or on the car, they’ll have it. Unfortunately, it means that research and development is outsourced, your total capacity for innovation is determined by a team down the road and your success (or failure) is determined by another team. For the avoidance of doubt, this isn’t a junior team, but with a shell full of Ferrari parts, it should make the on-track transition for a driver easier.

However, as winning the British Grand Prix shows, nothing can prepare you for the media onslaught that being a successful (or unsuccessful) Ferrari driver brings. Bearman hasn’t yet had a real crisis, but he is remarkably human for a Formula 1 driver.

The Silverstone race is the one weekend a year in the UK that the Grand Prix is shown live on free-to-air TV, so Sky have to up their game. Part of this was an incredible feature of Ayrton Senna’s 1985 race-winning Lotus, with the black and gold machine screaming its way through modern Silverstone.

Ollie Bearman was at the wheel, and admitted doing an extra lap before pitting. Fair enough, you’re an F1 driver, you’ll get away with that. But what was different was Bearman pulling up in the pits and openly weeping, emotional about this small part of F1 history.

For a sport that needed its athletes to take off their masks to be successful in the mainstream, no body language translator was needed to show what Bearman was feeling. And a shout out to Karun Chandhok for keeping everything running.

Less of a shout out for Sky who unbelievably have not posted it on their socials, but there’s plenty of LEGO race footage, obviously.

So if that’s Bearman, what of the other side of the garage? Esteban Ocon has either fallen out with Ayao Komatsu, or he hasn’t, or he might be replaced with another driver, or he won’t. And that driver might be Leonardo Fornaroli, or it might be Ryo Hirakawa, or a mystery third option or it might not be a replacement at all.

There is a concept of an Esteban Ocon, but this year, can you name one highlight from him on track? With three points so far this season, Ocon is comfortably on track to have his worst finish in F1 since he joined the grid the first time round in a Manor. 

Is he a bad driver? Absolutely not. But I think he has found his floor. If Bearman is the future for Ferrari, Ocon serves as a cautionary tale, as he might have once been the future for a post-Hamilton Mercedes. Given Ocon’s shock win (Shockon, sorry), his driving style and his links to Toto Wolff, he could have been given a year at the top to sink or swim. It never happened, and instead, it looks like Ocon is drifting towards an exit door. Unless he isn’t etc. 

As for the team itself, they don’t seem to have an identity anymore. They’re not the team for America, because there’s Cadillac. They can’t be the plucky underdogs, because that could be any number of midfield teams. So, who are they? If you follow Haas on social platforms, for example, and it’s not because you want to follow all the teams, why?

There’s a lot of potential there, but Haas lacks some sort of direction. Perhaps it leans into being the final stop to greatness for the future stars of the sport, but at the moment, it looks like Haas are continuing to drift, and in F1, standing still means falling behind.

All the headlines in 2026 are video game references.

Abandonware is the sort of thing that can absolutely end any semblance of your productivity. Those games you remember smashing odd commands into a command prompt (whatever that is), hoping that it reads your command.

Some of them are free, some of them will remind you of long-forgotten games, like this from Sid Meier and Alpha Centauri.

There are so many quotes from this game that just work.