Esteban Ocon will put the first laps on Haas’ F1 2025 challenger, the VF-25, with the team explaining they want to ensure that he is “100 per cent” okay with the car.

His maiden will take place at Silverstone on 16 February.

Esteban Ocon will cover the first laps in Haas’ VF-25

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Haas have an all-new line-up for the F1 2025 championship having signed Ocon from Alpine while Oliver Bearman steps up from Formula 2, the duo replacing Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen.

Ocon has already had his first run in Haas’ F1 machinery as he parted ways with Alpine ahead of the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in order to be free to test with Haas in the post-season test.

That Tuesday, the Frenchman covered 119 laps of the Yas Marina circuit and finished 10th of the 23 drivers present.

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His 119 laps though, are far short of Bearman’s tally as a Haas driver as not only did he contest two Grands Prix with the Ferrari-powered team last season, but he also took part in several Free Practice outings in preparation for his full-time debut.

As such Haas are giving Ocon the first laps in the all-new VF-25 as team boss Komatsu concedes that if either of the two has installation problems, it’s more likely to be the former Alpine driver.

“We will do a filming day in Silverstone first, and then we go to Bahrain and do a filming day in Bahrain,” team boss Ayao Komatsu told the media including PlanetF1.com.

“The filming day in Bahrain is the two days before the official test starts.

“We’re going to have Esteban driving in Silverstone. Why, because Esteban in terms of driver installation is more challenging. So we just want to make sure 100% Esteban’s installation is fine so if we got an issue, we’ve got more time to react to this.

“Whereas with Ollie we are pretty, with Esteban pretty much as well, but we’re more confident with Ollie’s installation than Esteban’s.

“So Esteban first, then Ollie in Bahrain shakedown. That means that Ollie is going to start the pre-season testing.”

He confirmed that the Silverstone test will be on “February 16th” with Bearman’s outing just over a week later in the build-up to pre-season testing, which runs from 25 to 27 February.

Declaring that last season Haas were “punching above our weight”, the Japanese team principal added that he wants to get Haas to the point where they beat “some ” of the bigger teams “without nobody screwing up but we’re not there yet”.

Asked when Haas could reach that point, he admitted: “Difficult question. I don’t know because I’m just doing the things that we can think of to improve.

“We’ve got to look at every area of the business, attention to detail, priorities. So we are just hitting those areas that we think is most efficient right now,and the next month that’ll be something different. So now I haven’t sat down thinking think about how long it’s gonna take, because you just never know. But now I don’t know, a few years I guess.”

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