F1's worst-performing team-mate - why Esteban Ocon isn't as bad as he looks

Eighteen points to three. On paper, it is one, if not the most, one-sided team-mate battle among any of Formula 1‘s 2026 midfield pairings, and it has been enough to generate genuine speculation about Esteban Ocon‘s future at Haas beyond 2026.

Oliver Bearman, sitting comfortably clear of his more experienced team-mate through the first 10 rounds of the season, is being talked about as the driver who is dominating the other side of the garage.

Look closer at how that gap was actually built, though, and the picture looks less like a rookie-turned-sophomore steamrolling a grand prix winner, and more like a car that has handed one driver a run of opportunities the other simply hasn’t had – before taking performance away from both of them entirely.

The story of the 18-3 scoreline is really the story of the season’s first five rounds.

Bearman opened in Melbourne with seventh place and six points, immediately putting daylight between himself and Ocon, who finished 11th and scoreless.

China followed the same pattern: a sprint point and fifth in the grand prix took Bearman to 17 points after just two events, while Ocon’s tally stayed at zero.

By Canada, round five, Bearman had nudged on to 18 points with a gritty 10th. It is also the round that offers the clearest evidence that this hasn’t been an even fight.

Haas ran its two cars to different specifications that weekend: Bearman got the new aerodynamic package for qualifying and the race, while Ocon was held over on the previous-spec car through Friday and the sprint, only receiving the upgrade once there was time to fit it before Sunday.

Whatever else is true about the gap between them, for at least one weekend it was a decision made in the garage, not a difference decided on track.

Monaco complicated the picture rather than extending Bearman’s lead. Ocon out-qualified his teammate – starting 17th to Bearman’s 19th – and converted it into ninth place and the points that make up the bulk of his season total. Bearman retired.

In Barcelona the following round, the two lined up almost together on the grid, 16th and 17th, before Bearman retired again with a mechanical problem.

Then the car stopped allowing either driver to fight for points.

Austria, Silverstone and Spa – rounds eight through 10 – produced nothing for either driver.

Haas has been open about the cause: a chronic shortfall in medium-to-high-speed rear downforce that the team’s boss, Ayao Komatsu, has pointed to directly, compounded by upgrades that made the VF-26 harder to set up rather than easier.

Bearman himself has described the team “chasing its tail” through the upgrade process and warned publicly that rivals like Racing Bulls and Alpine are out-developing Haas at a rate the team cannot currently answer.

By the time both drivers arrived in Budapest with three consecutive blanks behind them, the 18-3 scoreline hadn’t moved in over a month.

It was a number frozen from an earlier, better version of Haas’s season, not a live account of one driver getting the better of the other.

That context is what makes Bearman’s answer in Thursday’s press conference worth taking seriously rather than dismissing as a driver deflecting an awkward question.

“It’s a tough situation that is happening at our team,” the Briton said. “We’ve been speaking about it a lot, but the inconsistency between our parts has been quite high.

“I’ve been on the bad side of that and I’ve also been on the good side of that, but it’s a shame because it means that you’re always chasing a moving target.

“Overnight, we can have changes to our car balance without expecting that. All of that is to say that it’s not always a fair fight, the one that we are having, and sometimes we feel like we’re fighting with our hands almost tied behind our backs.

“Of course, I feel like I’m performing at a really high level, and I really see a step in my performances from 12 months ago, even from the start of the season. That’s all I can do. At this stage, we’re not in the fight for points. We’re not in the fight to do a whole lot other than try to get the most out of ourselves and learn as much as possible in this difficult period, hoping that soon we’re going to have the performance to put that to work and score points. It’s been a challenge for us.

“I’m happy with what I’m doing, but the story is not necessarily what you see in the headline.”

Set against the Canada split-spec decision, the Monaco and Barcelona reversals, and a car that has stopped scoring for both men alike, that isn’t a driver making excuses for a struggling team-mate, but rather a fairly accurate description of a season where the biggest variable hasn’t been the gap in ability between two Haas drivers, but the gap in what their car has been capable of giving either of them from one weekend to the next.