Round 17 of the 2025 FIA Formula 1 World Championship began with Friday practice at the Baku City Circuit as teams prepared for Sunday's 51-lap Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Bearman and Ocon ran the same program in FP1 - starting with a baseline stint on the Pirelli P Zero Red tire. A red flag stop for track repairs across the circuit resulted in a 25-minute pause in running, and adjustments to run plans. Continuing to focus on low-fuel set-up, both drivers went back out on used softs before a final stint on a fresh set of the red compound, Bearman setting his fastest time of 1:44.151 for P16, with Ocon producing a best of 1:44.439 to place P18.

Conditions remained humid for the start of FP2 - the second 60-minute practice held late afternoon. Bearman's VF-25 left the garage on new soft tires, before achieving his quickest time of the day - a 1:41.891 - on mediums, to take P5 overall. Ocon opted to begin the session on mediums ahead of recording a 1:42.167, on softs, for P8. To close out the day, the duo went back to used mediums for sustained high-fuel running.

MoneyGram Haas F1 Team ran a total of 78 laps on Friday across FP1 and FP2 - 40 from Bearman and 38 from Ocon.

Ollie Bearman: "The lap time was very good and we've had a good car all day, honestly. We were struggling a bit with top speed in FP1, but we improved that in FP2 and now we look to be in the fight. I've had a good feeling with the car, which is the most important thing, so now we need to work overnight to make sure we get everything together for qualifying."

Esteban Ocon: "From FP1, we saw that the grip was pretty decent, and we've tried a lot of things across the cars, so now we need to choose what's best out there for tomorrow. I see some areas we're lacking, but in corners we look pretty decent. Looking ahead to qualifying we split who ran which tire in FP2, I ran on softs while Ollie used mediums, and now we need to look into the data and see what our engineers say as to which option is best."

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal: "It was a decent Friday. I think we've got our homework done and gathered a lot of data from drivers. FP2 wasn't perfect as we had an issue on Ollie's car, but considering that, we got all the data we needed, so we can analyze it tonight. We need to pick the right set-up configuration, finetune it all, and understand the tires tomorrow morning, before delivering it in qualifying."

Check out our Friday gallery from Baku here.