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Laurence Edmondson, F1 Editor
It seemed fitting that the first person to congratulate Ollie Bearman on his remarkable Formula One debut in Saudi Arabia was seven-time world champion and future Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton.
As the cars pulled up in the pit lane after the chequered flag, Hamilton, who finished two places behind the Ferrari reserve driver, walked over to the cockpit of car No. 38 to give the 18-year-old a hug.
“He was basically pulling me out of the car because I was struggling,” Bearman said after the race. “It was a really physical race.”
At that point the significance of his seventh-place finish had yet to sink in.
The headrest surround of his cockpit — made of high-density foam to absorb energy in an accident — was dented on one side from the repeated hits it had taken from the G-forces acting on his crash helmet.
Exhausted yet exhilarated, here he was being congratulated by Hamilton — the sport’s most successful driver and the man Bearman somehow beat to making an F1 debut in the cockpit of a Ferrari.
While Hamilton’s move to the Italian team in 2025 means it is unlikely Bearman will become a full-time Ferrari driver for several years to come, his performance in Saudi Arabia had given himself the best possible chance of stepping back into a scarlet car in the future.
Asked how he felt having achieved the dream of so many young racing drivers, the answer highlighted the apparent ease and humility with which Bearman had conducted himself all weekend.
“It is weird to not watch a Formula One race and it is probably the first Formula One race I haven’t watched for a long time,” he said. “So, I’ll have to go over it when I am back home.”
Seizing the moment
Just 48 hours earlier, Bearman had been preparing himself for the second weekend of the Formula Two season after securing pole position for the junior series’ feature race in Saudi Arabia.
There’s always a chance a reserve driver will be called upon to race at any grand prix weekend, but it is usually so slim that many F1 reserves never climb back into the cockpit after completing their precautionary seat fit at the start of the year.
In Bearman’s case, it was Carlos Sainz’s appendix that presented the opportunity of a lifetime.
Sainz bravely took part in the opening two practice sessions of the weekend before his appendicitis was diagnosed, but on Friday morning had to be rushed to hospital to be operated on.
Bearman received a phone call from Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur two-and-a-half hours before final practice, sharing the news that he was about to make his F1 debut on one of the most fearsome circuits on the calendar.
“We called him, it was something like 2pm on Friday I think, to jump into the car for FP3,” Vasseur said. “It’s not Barcelona [a track Bearman had tested at in January], we are in Jeddah. The challenge was mega.”
The limited preparation time was far from ideal, but it did carry one benefit for Bearman.
“I honestly did not have time to get nervous, because … it was so late that I needed to get ready to go out on track and make up for lost time,” he said.
“That made my life a little more difficult and I was flat out with the engineers trying to figure everything out to get up to speed as quickly as possible.”
A reminder of how tough a challenge Bearman was facing came with 20 minutes remaining in final practice when Zhou Guanyu crashed heavily at Turn 4.
The stoppage to clear up Zhou’s wrecked Sauber curtailed Bearman’s practice time further, meaning he only had time for one lap on fresh soft tyres and low fuel before qualifying.
At the very least, a rookie would normally expect to have a day-and-a-half of preseason testing plus three practice sessions at their debut race before attempting their first qualifying lap.
Bearman took part in a private test with Ferrari in January this year, but it was in a two-year-old car and more of a reward for his results in F2 last year than a true preparation for the real thing.
Yet in his first qualifying session, taking place between the unforgiving walls of the Jeddah street circuit, he was just 0.036s off taking Hamilton’s place in the top ten on the grid.
Rather understandably, inexperience played a part as he made a mistake on his first flying lap when his tyres were fresh and therefore had to rely on a lap when the tyres were slightly past their best.
But with so little preparation and so much pressure on his shoulders, 11th on the grid was a remarkable result.
His fastest time in Q2 was 0.530s off teammate Charles Leclerc in the same session.
Leclerc is arguably F1’s fastest qualifier and held the significant advantage of knowing the car from preseason testing, the opening race in Bahrain and a full three practice sessions at Jeddah prior to qualifying.
“It was so close, so close,” Bearman said of his gap to a place in the top ten. “That’s why it hurts a bit more.
“I made a mistake on my first push so I had to do it on my second and the tyres aren’t really the best there, so that was my mistake and I’ll take that on the chin.”
Qualifying was one thing, but the race — all 50 laps of it at F1’s fastest street circuit — would be quite another. Although Bearman has completed hundreds of races in his junior career to date, none have been as long, as gruelling or as fast as the 2024 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
The pressure, complexity and sheer speed of F1 all conspire to generate mistakes among the inexperienced, and here was Bearman lining up on the grid having completed no more than nine consecutive laps of the circuit up to that point.
“For the race today, I was a bit nervous,” Vasseur admitted after the chequered flag.
“You have so many things to manage in F1 with the starting procedure, with the pit stop, the steering wheel and so on, it was not an easy one and at the end of the day it went very well.
“At the end he managed very well, if you have a look he was even able to push in the last lap to keep Lando [Norris] and Lewis behind him.
“I was even surprised by myself being happy for him to push a little bit more from the pit wall and not be conservative as he was not doing mistakes at this stage.”
In truth, the opening lap of the race looked like a wild ride from Bearman’s onboard camera.
Starting from the middle of the pack, he was forced to cut the apex at the second corner and then appeared to misjudge his braking for Turn 3 and cut another apex at Turn 4.
But with one of the hardest moments of the race out of the way, he settled into a rhythm.
A pass on Yuki Tsunoda on lap 11, in which Bearman put the RB driver out of position on the straight and then dived to the inside of Turn 1 to complete the move, helped build his confidence.
A multiple-lap battle with Nico Hulkenberg then followed and served as a lesson in how to get the most from an F1 car’s hybrid system.
Unlike the 620-bhp V6 engine of an F2 car, an F1 power unit produces over 1000 bhp, with 160 bhp coming from a battery pack that allows the boost to be deployed at different moments around the lap.
Understanding how best to use that power in battle took a few laps, but Bearman quickly caught on.
“On the restart I did a pretty good move on Tsunoda, and I don’t think he expect me to go on the inside,” Bearman said.
“I had a lot more pace than these guys and they were just a bit smarter than me with energy usage, which is something I’ve never had to do before.
“I was pretty much learning on the job. Especially with Nico, he seemed to use his battery in all the right places and I seemed to use it in all the wrong places, so it took me a few laps to figure it out.
“Once you do a lap and drain the [battery] pack you have to wait another one to get back up there.
“I was a bit inefficient with my pass on Nico, but I think the good thing I can take from that is that I stayed disciplined and didn’t try to over push.”
His reward at the chequered flag was a seventh-place finish and six points on his F1 debut.
Knowing that it might be his last chance in an F1 car for some time, he pushed hard on his final lap and set his personal best time as he crossed the line.
Conveniently, Leclerc also set the fastest lap of the race just before the finish, allowing for another direct comparison between the two teammates.
The difference was 0.554s in Leclerc’s favour — similar to the gap from qualifying and an impressive margin for a driver with no prior F1 race experience who had just completed a long stint on a single set of tyres.
However, for Vasseur it was not Bearman’s pace that stood out the most.
“I would say the pace, I don’t want to say it’s easy to have, but it’s something they [young drivers] can achieve,” he said. “The fact he did a short weekend without FP1, without FP2, without any mistakes … for me that’s unrealistic.
“Honestly, I was completely impressed by this, in Jeddah, between the walls, skipping FP1, FP2, directly almost in quali, Q2 first lap he was doing a good lap, he had the red flag, he made a mistake in the second one, he started the last lap in the quali with nothing on the board and he was three hundredths behind Lewis.
“With a clean Q2, I think he’d be able to do Q3.
“But again, this weekend in Jeddah you have to consider it as a step [for Bearman], not the final target.
“He did well this weekend, he will have other challenges in front of him in the future with F2, he will do a couple of practice sessions with us and Haas later in the season, and we know every single day will be a new challenge.
“But we know that if he continues with the same approach as he had today, he will do well.”
What’s next?
Remarkably, Sainz left hospital the day after his operation and attended Saturday’s race. Although clearly still in pain as he walked through the paddock, he is expected to recover in time for the next round in Australia.
A final call will be made closer to the event, but Sainz, who is in a crucial moment in his own career without a contract for next year, will be do everything in his power to return.
Meanwhile, Bearman will step back into the Formula Two paddock in Australia for the third round of the series.
His four wins in F1’s feeder series last year means he is one of the favourites to claim the title this year, but his Ferrari call up in Saudi Arabia means he currently has fewer points in F2 than F1.
Haas, who fielded him in two free practice sessions last year and will do more of the same this year, is an obvious landing place if he makes the jump from F2 to F1 in 2025.
Both Haas’ current drivers — Nico Hukenberg and Kevin Magnussen — are out of contract at the end of the year and Ferrari’s supply deal with the American team means it could pull some strings to place him there.
“Last year when we ran him in FP1 sessions in Mexico and Abu Dhabi straight away it was obvious that he’s a total package, he’s so impressive,” Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu told Sky Sports on Saturday evening.
“So I was very happy that we got him for six FP [practice] runs this year and very happy for him.”
His performance in Saudi Arabia has significantly strengthened his case for promotion at the end of the year and is arguably worth as much as a title would be in the often chaotic and unpredictable world of F2.
But Vassuer, who has worked with young drivers in junior formulae for the majority of his career, has warned against building too much hype around the 18-year-old at this stage.
Instead, he has tasked Bearman with showing what he can do over the course of a season in F2.
“I think the best way to help him is not to draw a conclusion from today,” Vasseur said on Saturday night.
“OK, we have to take it easy, that he will have other opportunity during the season to do FP1, to test the car, and we will do it properly, the main focus is and will stay the F2 this season he has a huge challenge that I will keep in mind.
“Also that he did the pole position and we killed the weekend for him in F2! But he has a huge challenge in F2 and it’s the primary challenge of his season.”
Source: www.espn.com