Haas team boss, Ayao Komatsu admits disappointment at Esteban Ocon's maiden season with the American team.

Things got off to a good enough start with a fifth in China, and while there were sevenths in Monaco and Abu Dhabi, that was about as good as it got.

On the other side of the garage, Oliver Bearman, in his rookie season, out-qualified the Frenchman 14-10, and though he scored just 3 more points, showed a lot more consistency, especially in the second half of the year.

The situation was not helped by the Frenchman's attitude, and while, with Bearman, there were none of the sort of fireworks experienced with some of his previous teammates, Ocon constantly criticised his car.

"If you purely look at the sporting result, without going to details, for sure nobody's satisfied with Esteban's sporting result last year, right?" says Komatsu, according to Motorsport.com.

"You know, he's a team-mate against a rookie," he adds. "Yes, an amazing rookie, but nonetheless, he's got ten years of F1 under his belt. He's a race winner, he's a podium finisher. So we expected more from him.

"Obviously, it's not totally his fault, it's 50-50, right?" he continues. "Sometimes it's the team, we couldn't give him the car that he was comfortable with, especially in qualifying. And then some circuits, that's got exaggerated much more than other circuits.

"Look at Baku, you know, he really wasn't happy with certain braking performance, then he was miles off in the qualifying pace. Yes, Baku happened to be one of Ollie's strongest circuits, but we didn't expect Esteban's worst day to be so far off.

"Again, there's not one reason, there's not just a driver, there's not just a team, and then each instance is different. There's no common underlying factor, there's no silver bullet, it's just a process, how we work together to get the bottom of it so much quicker and then put things in place for next race.

"That's the bit I feel we - all of us together, team and driver - didn't do it very well last year, because I really felt like we should have got on top of that quicker."

Komatsu, is also confused by the erratic nature of Ocon's performances.

"Look at Abu Dhabi," he says, "on Friday, he was completely off the pace, like four-tenths off Ollie. Saturday, bang, he was on the pace. Again, it's not just one big silver bullet, it's a few, I wouldn't say little things, but I could even say little things, few things that really trigger, let's say, a snowball effect.

"We've really got to get on top of those things quicker," he admits, "because Esteban's potential is clear. If you look at Abu Dhabi, what he can do on Saturday, Sunday, coming off the back of a very poor Friday, that's the talent he has, that's the capability he has.

"We've got to harness that, we've got to make sure we use that, because we really need two drivers this year. I mean, we needed both of them last year, but we need more this year."