Young driver Oliver Bearman made his triumphant debut in Formula 1 with Ferrari, making his mark at the Jeddah Grand Prix with a deserved seventh place in a weekend that exceeded expectations.
The youngest driver to drive and score points for Ferrari. If anyone had said this sentence to Ollie Bearman before March 8th, he would hardly have believed it. However, this Formula 1 dominated by Verstappen and pervaded by politics, lately also characterized by noises off the track, which rarely leaves room for dreams, this time, has offered a unique opportunity to the Formula 2 driver. An opportunity for Bearman, not just make their debut in the top category, at least for a weekend, but also to occupy one of the most coveted seats on the grid, aboard a Ferrari single-seater next to Charles Leclerc.
The appendicitis that had affected Sainz already since Wednesday, which had forced him to stay out of action for the weekend in Jeddah, forced Fred Vasseur to call Bearman, poleman of the weekend in F2, to replace him. This meant that the young 18-year-old English driver would have to leave his category to debut in Formula 1 with only one free practice session to adapt as much as possible to a car that would become his in a few hours, and with which he would have to face qualifications and the race.
The main objective, especially on an urban circuit like Jeddah, was to bring the car home, but Ollie, calm, showed that he wanted more. His dissatisfaction, after being left out of Q3 by just 0.0036 thousandths of a second behind seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, surprised even the media.
A growing weekend
Despite starting from eleventh position, in Bearman's eyes you could see the desire and impatience to prove that this was not enough for him. After a frenetic start, the young driver made the most of the red tyres, but with a certain fear as a novice among the lions, which perhaps prevented him from gaining positions as he would have liked. However, iTogether with Riccardo Adami, Carlos Sainz's race engineer, Bearman gradually finds harmony with his SF-24. On the eighth lap, after the collision between Stroll and under the Safety Car regime, Bearman puts on the hard tyres, which he should have managed until the end, and with them he makes two excellent overtakings, first on Nico Hulkenberg, who put in all his his experience to not make it easy for him, and later on Yuki Tsunoda.
With the passage of Hamilton and Norris to the pits, Ollie reaches seventh position and from there shows all his talent. Despite the fatigue and difficulties in managing the G forces on his neck which is not as trained as that of his rivals, Bearman does not give in to the pressure of Lando Norris, behind on red tyres, and completed a series of personal fast laps in the final part of the race to cross the finish line in seventh place, with a race pace that in the second part approaches that of Alonso or Russell, according to telemetry data.
Vettel's motivation and Hamilton's compliments
The image of the weekend, together with that of Ollie hugging his father, visibly anxious throughout the weekend, is also that of Lewis Hamilton, who was waiting for the young man to get out at the end of the race to congratulate him, gesture replicated by the two Ferrari drivers and a large part of the grid. But not only that: before the race, as also confirmed by Bearman himself, his idol Sebastian Vettel would have sent him a message of support and motivation.
With its debut Formula 1, Oliver Bearman has shown that this Formula 1 needs fresh air and that, in the smaller categories, a promising future awaits us. Now all that remains is to wait if, with the contracts expiring in 2024, Ollie will find a permanent place, deserved now more than ever, in F1.
