Oliver Bearman, who was recently confirmed to drive for Haas in 2025, is getting a second shot at racing in Formula 1 in 2024 after a spectacular debut in Saudi Arabia earlier in the season. However, he isn’t too thrilled about the type of circuits he is racing at this year.
Both the Jeddah Corniche Circuit in Saudi Arabia and the Baku City Circuit in Azerbaijan are high-speed Street Circuits where the margin of error is close to zero. And that’s why Bearman said that he wouldn’t have picked these circuits for his first two races if he had a choice.
He explained how a driver has to test the limits of the car to get confidence for braking later and later into the tight corners of the Baku Circuit, especially the Castle section where the track is extremely narrow making it a crash-prone part of the track.
“It’s a tough track, my second race in F1 and my second street track. If I could have picked two tracks it wouldn’t have been these ones,” Bearman said during the driver’s conference ahead of the race weekend as quoted by F1 Unlocked.
Oliver Bearman: “I’m excited about getting back inside a Formula 1 car and competing in my first full weekend, I’ve done FP1s with the team, but to be able to build on that and actually do a full weekend is a really exciting prospect.”
— Junaid #JB17 (@JunaidSamodien_) September 10, 2024
“To get confidence on the brakes you have to be fast, but that is risky. I’ll leave a bit of a safety margin in the first sessions, and get confident before I start to push.”
However, it was a bit of a shocker to hear Bearman say that he would not have selected the Baku City Circuit as one of his first venues to race in F1. After all, he won both the Sprint Race and the Feature Race in Formula 2 last season.
Despite the risks, Bearman is ready to take on Baku
The reason why Bearman is getting a second race this season is because of an incident in Monza that resulted in Kevin Magnussen receiving a race ban. The Danish driver has received a race ban after he exceeded the maximum number of penalty points allowed in a season (12).
Pierre Gasly was “surprised” his clash with Kevin Magnussen incurred the penalty points that have led to Magnussen’s race ban and wants to help him avoid it ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/EwsBCdsO7L
— The Race (@wearetherace) September 1, 2024
Speaking about this situation, Bearman stated that Magnussen had been close to a race ban for quite a few races and it was a possibility that he might have to step in at some point in the season. However, the young Briton feels ready to step up in the Haas because he has been preparing for the 2025 season ever since he was announced as their driver.
