Before Jeddah Madness, Oliver Bearman’s First 10 Minutes in F1 Proved Star Quality: “He Had a Bigger Plan”

Oliver Bearman surprised the entire F1 community with his superb debut at a difficult track like Jeddah. For the majority of us, though, Bearman’s outstanding P7 finish put him in the spotlight. However, even before his Saudi Arabian madness, the British racer had already made a deep impression on one of F1’s straightforward entities. That person is none other than the former Haas team principal, Guenther Steiner.

While writing his exclusive column on F1’s official website, Steiner has showered praise on the F2 driver. Given that the 18-year-old was the last-minute replacement for the ailing Carlos Sainz, the pressure was only going to increase. Despite this, when Bearman only narrowly missed qualifying for Q3 and finished 7th in the race, Steiner, like everyone else, praised Bearman’s outstanding efforts. However, the American-Italian did this by recalling a previous experience.

He elaborated, “He understood he just needed to do a good job. Get the feeling of the car and bring it home and that’s it. He realized his career was not depending on those FP1s [in 2023]. He had a bigger plan.”

Steiner intended his claim to bring the readers’ attention to Oliver Bearman’s outstanding FP1 appearances for Haas last year. At that point, the British driver succeeded in winning the 58-year-old’s trust, owing to his calmness.

However, now again when Bearman has performed well in Jeddah, this hasn’t surprised the ex-Haas boss. Steiner claims that the #38 driver’s calmness is the main reason for his success at such a young age.

To put it briefly, Steiner feels that Bearman‘s background and familial upbringing must have helped him to remain calm in pressure situations, resulting in such a big success. However, while wrapping up the American-Italian said that based on his performance in Jeddah, the 18-year-old certainly deserves an F1 seat.

Ferrari’s junior driver programme boss also praised Oliver Bearman’s F1 debut

Ferrari has been one of the teams to provide the best of the talents from its junior driver programme. While earlier it was Charles Leclerc, who made the headlines with his solid talent, Oliver Bearman has taken that baton now. The 18-year-old who replaced Carlos Sainz just before FP3, had no idea as he was gearing up for his F2 races.

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Despite this, the young driver felt no pressure and managed to get a solid P7. This performance has made the Ferrari junior driver programme’s boss Jock Clear proud of Bearman.

While talking on the F1 Nation podcast Clear said, as quoted by Crash.net, “That’s very, very intimidating for anybody. From our point of view, we’re just very proud of how well he’s integrated with the team, and how well the team has supported him.” 

In addition, Clear firmly believes that Bearman is prepared to transition to the pinnacle of motorsport. For this, Clear stated that he was already convinced and that the fact that Fred Vasseur dared to place Bearman in SF-24 at such a crucial time validates his conviction. While wrapping up, Clear stated that Bearman would continue to improve, which will ‘pay off increasingly’ when he reaches F1.