Oliver Bearman in F1 at the deep end?

Eighteen-year-old Formula 2 driver Oliver Bearman was sensationally called up at Jeddah by Ferrari for his Formula 1 debut, as Carlos Sainz was hospitalised with appendicitis. On Ferrari’s Driver Academy, he had made F1 appearances in Friday practice sessions last year for Haas, in Mexico and Abu Dhabi. He’d impressed on those occasions by immediately running at a comparable pace to the team’s regular drivers Nico Hülkenberg and Kevin Magnussen. He’d also driven the new Ferrari on the simulator. On Thursday in Jeddah he had set pole for the F2 race and took no part in F1 practice. He got the surprise call-up on Friday morning and withdrew from the F2 race to become the youngest-ever Ferrari F1 driver.

“I think it worked out better for him being thrown straight in,” said Ferrari’s Frédéric Vasseur, “as he didn’t have time to get nervous about it.”

He did a remarkably composed job throughout. He narrowly missed out on pushing Lewis Hamilton out of Q3 and had he not gone just a little too deep into Turn 22, requiring him to do another lap on tyres by then past their best, he’d almost certainly have got through. Starting 11th, he made up places, passing Hülkenberg and Yuki Tsunoda, to be running a few seconds behind Fernando Alonso/George Russell and running a similar tempo. With the newer-tyred cars of Lando Norris and Hamilton catching him late in the race, he was able to step up the pace to keep them off his back before the end to take seventh. “I was doing qualifying lap after qualifying lap at the end there,” he said, elated.

Sainz’s usual race engineer Riccardo Adami ran Bearman through the two days of his adventure and talked of how they operated together with zero preparation: “We tried to give him information, not too much information, but at the same time to encourage him to express his talent because I saw that he was a pure talent in the car…

“Compared to Carlos I had to take a step back in a way because the experience of course is not there yet. So I had to cut down the information I was providing in very basic terms first of all, and then try to support him lap by lap to start with and during the race also try to provide the minimum information possible to [not] overload him.

So it was quite different compared to racing with Carlos but I enjoyed it because when I saw that he was flying out there I was super happy and he was performing at a top level. I was surprised to see the speed he had during the race and especially closing the race, he was able to put down some good laps that was quite impressive…

“He was understanding and executing the things that we discussed together before.”

Jock Clear, in his role with the Ferrari Driver Academy, was already familiar with Bearman: “Before we even introduced him to FDA we saw a mature young man, a thinking man. His strength is in how he operates and how he’s handled himself. A great maturity and a pleasure to work with. I’ve always said that when you get to F1 it’s intelligence that makes the difference. All of these guys can drive fast, but having the mental bandwidth to deal with everything that’s going on around him, that’s something that Ollie manifested early in karting, in his F4 days. He was clearly intelligent and that was going to make him stand out…

“Driving fast, that’s natural, that’s talent. But operating an F1 car in the heat of the moment is a testament to his education over the last couple of years.”