Oliver Bearman Reveals the Most Stressful Moment of His F1 Debut

It was natural for Oliver Bearman to be under pressure for his shock F1 debut in Jeddah. The Ferrari prodigy did quite well to get up to speed with the car in FP3 and qualifying. However, one thing still stressed him out before the lights went out for his debut F1 race.

Speaking on the High-Performance podcast, Bearman revealed that he was struggling to find the bite point of the clutch of his SF-24. While it was the most basic, the F2 prodigy was feeling stressed before the race. He said, “Just getting that clutch drop correct and consistent is what you need to do and that’s something I couldn’t do before the race.”

“My spread of clutch drop was between 20 and 60 percent. 60 percent you don’t really jump off the line, you get a really slow start and 20 percent you go into anti-stall and you don’t get off the line at all.”, the 19-year-old added.

Bearman was feeling scared of not getting a good start or hitting anti-stall at the race start. And it is quite natural for him to not get a hand of it quickly, as he has been accustomed to driving an F2 car for over a season now.

The overall handling of an F1 car relative to an F2 car is vastly different. Bearman also knew that he was going to experience each other about 12-15 kph faster in the F1 machinery. Besides, finding the clutch-bite point is often an issue novice drivers face for learning road cars, so Bearman facing it for his maiden F1 race seems quite expected.

Differences between F1 and F2 cars

The clutch on an F1 car is relatively smaller and has a peculiar window. Even the operating mechanism is different than in F2 — more like the gear shift paddle on the steering wheel. Meanwhile, F2 cars have a hand-paddle lever to operate the clutch.

One more peculiar aspect is F2 cars have standardized clutches from one supplier which is unlike F1, where all teams manufacture their own clutches. However, that is the fundamental difference between F2 and F1 — F2 is a spec series with several standardized parts.

The engines and gearboxes in F2 are standardized and even the chassis is similar for all teams from Dallara. That is why, drivers make a lot of difference in F2 and get the chance to showcase their talents.