Komatsu said he "expected more" from the experienced Ocon, who had 20-year old rookie Ollie Bearman as his teammate, but was beaten by the young Brit both in the championship standings, and qualifying head-to-head (10-14).

While Komatsu admitted Ocon's P15 championship result was not fully down to the 29-year-old, the comments came at an interesting time considering the promising start to 2026 from the American team.

Ocon, speaking to media, including GPblog, explained why he is not concerned by his team principal's comments, and backed Haas to put a disappointing debut season for the Frenchman behind them.

Ocon said: "It was not really a surprise to see Ayao's comments. We talked a lot during the winter. And obviously, it's been an up and down season for the whole team. It hasn't been very straightforward.

"But when you read the whole article, [except] the headline, you can see that the team has taken responsibility as well. I always said it was 50:50. And I said it many times last year for 12, 13, 14 races. I had this issue of front locking, this issue of instability. And this is something that was very different on the other side of the garage."

On his issue with braking during the season, Ocon claimed the problem was not resolved until the last Friday practice session of the 2025 season in Abu Dhabi, where he impressively finished P7 in the Grand Prix.

"It was similar pressure on the brakes, similar condition across the two cars, locking for me, not on the other side. And that was the case until Friday in Abu Dhabi."

"Whatever we have changed, suddenly the car came back to life. I was half a second away from where I should be on Friday. And then on Saturday morning, we performed the way we should. Great Q3, finished seventh in the race, which is what we needed for the whole season.

"So we are working all together always to try and do the best. There are things that we missed as a team overall and that we should have done better. You know, I'm expecting that we all do that this year and we put last year behind."

Another driver who will want to put 2025 behind them is Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton, but the seven-time world champion has already raised concerns about not having a new race engineer in time for the Australian Grand Prix, saying it is "detrimental" to his 2026 start.