‘Never seen anything better than that’ - Ferrari’s verdict on Oliver Bearman F1 debut

Ferrari’s junior driver programme boss Jock Clear has lauded Oliver Bearman’s F1 debut as a last-minute stand in for the team.

The 18-year-old Briton replaced Carlos Sainz, who was ruled out with appendicitis, at last weekend’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

Despite only having a couple hours’ notice and a single hour of practice to prepare himself, Bearman grabbed the headlines as he qualified 11th, before finishing seventh to score points on his grand prix debut.

“I couldn’t have hoped for a better weekend for Ollie,” Clear told the F1 Nation podcast.

“If you’d written the script, you would have balked a bit at the final result. You’d have said, ‘Yeah, let’s be realistic’.

“Because, if you brought him to a Grand Prix and said, two weeks ago, ‘You’re going to do the Grand Prix in Saudi’, mentally he gets prepared for it. We can do some things. We can practice some starts…

“But, when you drop him in on Friday morning, [with] one free practice session, and then you’re into qualifying against the big boys… that’s ominous.

“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.

“There’s so much information available, there’s so much work to do in an F1 car, and we’ve kept it simple. Matteo, the chief engineer, from the first get-go, was just ‘Keep it simple for Ollie’.

“‘There’s lots of information available, but let’s not overload him. Let’s just let him get up to speed’.

“What you see is what we knew he was capable of. But, boy, I didn’t expect that, under these circumstances.”

Asked if it was the best F1 driver debut he had ever seen, Clear responded: “I suppose you would all say that I’m a bit biased, and Jacques [Villeneuve] had won an IndyCar championship when he got in an F1 car, but obviously he put it on pole in Melbourne and he would have won that race if Adrian [Newey] hadn’t told us to move over and let Damon [Hill] win, in 1996.

“But Jacques was 26 years old at that time, this guy is 18. So, at this level, at this stage, having come out of an F2 car at 18 years old, I’ve never seen anything better than that.”

Clear is absolutely convinced that Bearman, who has been linked with a Haas seat for 2025, is ready to make the step up to F1.

“I was convinced before that,” he said. “The fact that Fred [Vasseur] was brave enough to put him in this car this weekend, under the circumstances, speaks volumes for what we’ve seen of him already.

“I think this was better than we could have expected. But, when the decision was made, I suppose this is what we expected, if you see what I mean! I don’t mean to diminish the achievement. We really, really are over the moon with everything. But we sort of put him there thinking ‘I think he can do this’. And he’s absolutely vindicated that choice.”

Clear added: “I’ve often said about Oliver, he will get better and better the closer he gets to F1, because F1 recognises real intelligence, really thinking drivers – drivers that can think their way around situations really shine in F1.

“Ollie is super-sharp, and super-clever. That’s what he’s demonstrated this weekend. As I say, we know he’s quick, we’ve seen him in our car, and we know that he can drive a car fast.

“But the way he’s approached the weekend, the way he approached the race step by step… you’ve got to get out of the gate, off the grid, you’ve got to get round Turns 1 and 2 alongside some fairly feisty opposition who are going to get their elbows out. He did that cleanly. We said, ‘If he comes around the first lap with all four wheels still on, we’ll be really happy’.

“He did that, still in P11, so he held his position off the grid. From then on, he just grew into the race. You have to recognise every lap of the race was another 10 per cent experience for Ollie in this car so, by the time he’d done half the race, he’d doubled his experience in this car.

“He was learning super fast, but he never overstretched himself. That’s the thing I’m most proud of from him is that it’s very easy, especially when Charles is a bit ahead of you and you know this car will go quicker, there’s a bit more potential, it’s just to overstretch yourself, and make a mistake.

“And those last 10 laps with Norris and Lewis bearing down on him with a new set of soft tyres, you think ‘This is where he’s just going to lock up into Turn 1, it’s all gonna get messy’… but he didn’t.

“He kept the rhythm, he kept going and actually got quicker and quicker towards the end of the race. I think his best lap was on the penultimate lap, so it was just a really intelligent drive. That’s what I’m really proud of because that is always been his strength.

“That’s going to get better and better, and that’s going to pay off more and more as he gets to F1 and he starts to settle into what is an intelligent driver’s sport.”