Oliver Bearman has received high praise from Ferrari’s Driver Academy director following his F1 debut at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, and the teenager is expected to go from strength to strength after impressing in his F1 weekend. rookie.
Bearman received a last-minute call to step in for Ferrari ahead of Friday’s Free Practice 3 session in Jeddah, following the news that Carlos Sainz had been diagnosed with appendicitis. The 18-year-old put in an eye-catching performance, qualifying 11th on the grid before scoring points on his debut by finishing the race in P7.
Clear, who runs the Ferrari Driver Academy and has worked with many famous names in the sport during his years as a racing engineer, told the F1 Nation podcast that Bearman’s performance exceeded his expectations.
“I couldn’t have hoped for a better weekend for Ollie,” he said. “If you had written the script, you would have doubted the final result a little bit because if you had taken him to a Grand Prix and said two weeks ago: ‘you are going to do the Grand Prix in Saudi Arabia’, mentally he prepares for it.
“We can do some things, we can practice some starts, but when you leave it on Friday morning, a free practice session and then you get into qualifying against the big guys, that’s ominous. That’s very, very intimidating for anyone.
“I think from our point of view we are very proud of how well he has integrated with the team, how well the team has supported him. There is so much information available. There is a lot of work to do on an F1 car. We’ve kept it simple.
“Matteo, the chief engineer, said, from the get-go, ‘keep it simple for Ollie.’ There is a lot of information available, but let’s not overload it. Let’s let him catch up. What you see is what we knew he was capable of but, wow, I didn’t expect that under these circumstances.”
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Clear believes making his debut on the high-speed, 27-turn Jeddah Corniche circuit made the task even more challenging for Bearman, given the nature of the track along with the high temperatures and humidity.
“He has done very well here in his F2 career. He was on the front row last year and took pole in F2 on Thursday here, so it’s obviously a circuit he’s comfortable with,” Clear explained. “But that’s a completely different matter when you have to rate a car that you don’t know very well because, let’s be clear, it’s driven a couple of tests with us, it’s run a bit at Fiorano, but all with old cars.
“He has not driven this car. This is the first time he has driven this car. Going out and qualifying in Saudi Arabia, where those walls are quite tight and a lot of experienced F1 drivers say, “this track is scary”, and those walls are quite close to you, that’s intimidating in itself.
“The pressure on him in Q2 (you’ve set your first set, now you have a second set to try to get through to Q3) is when he shows that this is a different level and that was the point where it became a bit complicated. But he still did a great job putting it in 11th place. That exceeded our expectations.”
Regarding Bearman’s performance in Saturday night’s Grand Prix, Clear praised the Brit for his “intelligent” driving.
“I’ve often said about Oliver that he will get better and better the closer he gets to F1, because F1 recognizes real intelligence,” Clear said. “Drivers who can think through situations really shine in F1. Ollie is super sneaky, super smart and I think that’s what he’s shown this week.
“We know it’s fast. We have seen it in our car. We know you can drive a fast car. But the way he approached the weekend, the way he approached the race, step by step, you have to get off the grid and you have to face some pretty feisty rivals who are going to stick out their elbows. He did it cleanly.
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“We said if he comes to the first lap with all four wheels still going, we’ll be very happy. He did that. He was still in P11, so he kept his position off the grid, and from then on he just grew.” in the race.
“Admittedly, each lap of the race was another 10% of experience for Ollie in this car, so by the time he was halfway through the race, he had doubled his experience in this car. He was learning very fast, but he never tried too hard. I think that’s what I’m most proud of about him.
“It’s very easy, especially when Charles [Leclerc] is a little bit ahead of you and you know this car will go faster, there’s a little more potential to stretch too far and make a mistake. In those last 10 laps with Lando [Norris] and Luis [Hamilton] Stepping on a new set of soft tyres, you think this is where it’s going to lock up at Turn 1 and things are going to get complicated, but it wasn’t.
“He kept the pace. He kept going and actually got faster and faster towards the end of the race. I think his best lap was on the penultimate lap, so it was a really smart drive and that’s what I’m really proud of, because that’s always been his strong point and he’s going to get better and better. That will bear more and more fruit for him as he gets to F1 and begins to adapt to what is an intelligent driver’s sport.”
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When asked if this was the best debut he had seen in his extensive F1 career, Clear replied: “I suppose everyone would say I’m a bit biased, and Jacques [Villeneuve] He had won an IndyCar championship when he got into an F1 car, but he obviously took pole in Melbourne and would have won that race if Adrian [Newey] He hadn’t told us to move out and let Damon [Hill] win, in 1996, but obviously Jacques was 26 years old at the time.
“This kid is 18 years old, so at this level, having come out of an F2 car at 18 years old, I’ve never seen anything better than that.”
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And on whether Bearman has done enough to earn a place on the F1 grid in 2025, Clear added: “I think so. I was convinced before that and I think the fact that Fred [Vasseur] He was brave enough to put him in this car this weekend, given the circumstances, it says a lot about what we’ve already seen from him.
“I think this was better than we could have expected. But when the decision was made, I guess this is what we expected. I don’t want to diminish the achievement. “We’re really delighted with everything, but we put him there thinking, ‘I think he can do this,’ and he’s absolutely vindicated that choice.”
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