Haas has confirmed that Oliver Bearman will be their full-time driver from the 2025 season. After a stellar debut for Ferrari in Saudi Arabia earlier this season, Bearman’s name was already making a lot of noise to secure one of the Haas seats.
However, his Formula 2 campaign has been quite an under-par one, courtesy of his team Prema Racing not being able to deliver a winning car. Thus, Bearman is way off taking the F2 championship this year. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t won races in F2 before securing his Formula 1 seat.
BREAKING: Ollie Bearman will make the step up to F1 in 2025, signing a multi-year deal with @HaasF1Team!#F1 #RoadToF1 @OllieBearman pic.twitter.com/JVGbwU8XvE
— Formula 1 (@F1) July 4, 2024
The Ferrari prodigy raced in his maiden F2 season in 2023 and won four races. The Azerbaijan GP weekend was a breakthrough one for him, as Bearman got the pole as well as wins in both the sprint and the feature races.
Later in the season, the Briton also won the feature races in Barcelona and Monza, proving his elite caliber. These wins and podium performances in his debut F2 year caught a lot of teams’ attention. Thus, when Bearman got the chance to jump in Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari in Jeddah, many were excited to see his performance.
The 2024 season has not gone as Bearman would have expected. In his sophomore season, the 19-year-old was keen to fight for the F2 championship and perhaps win it before making a step up to Formula 1. However, Prema Racing has lost some of its dominant pace advantage this year and it has handicapped Bearman and his teammate Kimi Antonelli’s campaigns.
This season, Bearman has only won one race, which was the sprint race in Austria. After the Austrian GP weekend, the British driver stands only 14th in the drivers championship standings with 28 points to his name.
Can Bearman mount a championship challenge in F2 before his full-time F1 debut?
Currently, Oliver Bearman stands way off the championship leader Paul Aron who has 117 points already. With seven rounds remaining till Abu Dhabi, it is not impossible for Bearman to bridge this gap. However, for that to happen, Prema will have to take some major steps forward with their car performance.
The Austria sprint win is a beacon of hope for Prema and Bearman that maybe they can return to winning ways. Besides, the F2 championship is always quite an unpredictable one, given it is a spec series with minor performance deviations within teams.
The Bear is back! @OllieBearman took a dominant and well-deserved win in the Spielberg Sprint #F2 #AustrianGP pic.twitter.com/QyzOVHEXR4
— Formula 2 (@Formula2) June 29, 2024
Bearman will certainly have to do the heavy lifting if he wishes to challenge for the championship. Even if the 19-year-old cannot win it, he would hope to finish higher up the standings than his current position in P14.
However, the Ferrari prodigy won’t mind even if he fails to win the championship, as his F1 future is now secured at Haas. With only five F2 wins under his belt, the American team are taking a huge leap of faith in Bearman’s talent.
