Round 9 of the 2025 FIA Formula 1 World Championship began with Friday practice at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, with reserve driver Ryo Hirakawa participating in his second of four scheduled FP1 outings this season, this time replacing Esteban Ocon behind the wheel of the VF-25.

Bearman and Hirakawa ran the same program in FP1 - starting with a baseline stint on the Pirelli P Zero White tire. Swapping onto Red softs for their next runs, Bearman set his fastest time of 1:14.597 (P7) with Hirakawa achieving a best of 1:15.298 (P17). High-fuel runs back on the hard compound wrapped up the opening 60 minutes of practice.

Conditions remained sweltering for FP2 as Esteban Ocon returned to driving duties - second practice commencing early evening at 17:00 local. The Frenchman sampled both medium and soft compounds during the session - setting a best lap of 1:14.005 to place P18 overall. Bearman also started on mediums before bolting on a set of softs - the British rookie's quickest lap, a 1:14.126, classifying P19. Ocon returned to his earlier set of the medium compound while Bearman continued on softs for sustained running to close out the first day of track action.

MoneyGram Haas F1 Team ran a total of 99 laps on Friday across FP1 and FP2 - 46 by Bearman, 30 from Ocon and 23 from Hirakawa.

Ryo Hirakawa: "As always, I'd like to give appreciation to the team for the great opportunity today. The track was really hot, so it was difficult out there and it was really easy to overheat the tire, so we had to manage that quite a lot. I was suffering in braking, and in general there was lots to improve for FP2, and after the session we debriefed and some of those changes were made before FP2 started. I felt a lot more confident in the car compared to Bahrain and made a big step, and I have more FP1 sessions later in the season so I will keep preparing for them."

Ollie Bearman: "It was a tough day, especially this afternoon struggling a little bit with the balance in high speed and having a bit of a moment which lost us some time, so that's a shame. We have a bit of work to do overnight to work on the predictability of the car, but I think if we can find a good window we can be okay because in FP1 we showed pretty decent pace."

Esteban Ocon: "It wasn't easy, we need to understand a lot of things as the car was lacking here and there; some balance, a bit of inconsistency in some corners, and some overall grip. We need to look at how we optimize that better. There was only one real lap on the softs, there will be a few more tomorrow, and hopefully, we can work on it. On the technical directive, it didn't make a big shift or change for us, it was very similar."

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal: "It was a bit of a mixed Friday today. FP1 on Ollie's side started pretty well and he had decent performance. Ryo was in the car for the second time in FP1 and struggled with brakes, but other than the brake issue I think he did a good job. His feedback was good, good work ethic, and his constructiveness was great. The fact he went off in Turn 10 - you could say that was a driver mistake - but his brake performance was as expected, so I think it looked worse than it was. I'm still overall happy with how Ryo's performing and working with the team.

"FP2 was the disappointing part of the day, car performance wasn't quite there compared to FP1. Ollie went off as well, so we have a bit of work to do tonight, but I think looking at FP1, we can make the car better and get both drivers up there."

Check out our Friday gallery from Barcelona here.