Little joy for Banbury's TGR Haas at Grand Prix of United States

Esteban Ocon did finish the race, coming home 14th after starting 15th on the grid, but team-mate Oliver Bearman was forced to retire after 24 laps.

The Brit started from 13th on the grid and after moving up to 11th on the opening lap, he then moved into the top 10 after getting past Pierre Gasly on lap two.

There was contact and Bearman, whose car sustained damage in the process, was deemed culpable for causing a collision and was hit with a 10-second time penalty.

But as it turned out, the damage to his VF-26 sustained in the early clash saw him retire from the race.

Bearman said: "I caught the two cars in front of me very quickly. It made Pierre go defensive into Turn 12, and at Turn 13, I sent one up the inside, and to be honest, he saw me as he left space but to me, it didn’t feel enough.

"He gave space, but only half a car's worth, and I was committed, so we made a bit of contact – I picked up a huge amount of damage on my car, and I probably damaged his car as well.

"It was a shame as I felt like I was massively penalised anyway, as the damage ruined my race, and on top of that I picked up the penalty. In my view, it was a racing incident.

"I didn’t lose control, and I had to climb up the kerb to try and avoid contact. I don’t regret going for the move because at this stage in the season, if we don’t do anything special and get a bit lucky and be aggressive and go for it, we’re just not going to score points as we’re not always fast enough to score them on merit.”

Ocon said: “We had a mega start, we always do, we’re leading the stats on that.

"Since the beginning of the year, we’ve always gained two or three places at the start, and we did that once again so I’m proud that we’ve worked so well on that.

"The problems that we faced throughout the weekend came back, as I still had front-locking, and I still had quite a lot of understeer in high-speed.

"These inconsistencies are something that we really need to work on and understand, and we need to make sure we get rid of them in Mexico.

"The positive is that we did reduce it a little bit with setup, but that’s the maximum we can do with the current parts.”

TGR Haas F1 Team stays seventh position in the Constructors’ Championship on 30 points.