Oliver Bearman’s “intelligent” drive to seventh place on his debut proved he’s ready for a full-time Formula 1 seat, says the head of Ferrari’s young driver programme.
Ferrari Driver Academy head Jock Clear said team principal Frederic Vasseur’s decision to put the 18-year-old in one of their cars last weekend showed the team had high expectations of him.
“I was convinced before that and I think the fact that Fred was brave enough to put him in this car this weekend, under the circumstances, speaks volumes for what we’ve seen of him already,” Clear told the official F1 channel.
Bearman’s debut in place of the unwell Carlos Sainz Jnr went “better than we could have expected” said Clear, “but when the decision was made, I suppose this is what we expected.”
“I don’t want to belittle or 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.”
Asked whether Bearman had shown he was ready for a full-time seat next year, Clear said: “I think so.”
By the time Sainz realised he would not be able to participate in the weekend, Bearman had already missed the opportunity to drive in the first two practice sessions on Thursday.
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“We saw Carlos on Wednesday evening, we were all at the same restaurant, he was happy, he was enjoying a meal,” Clear explained. “On Thursday he came in and said he didn’t feel well. He came in late, didn’t feel well, but felt up to at least doing free practice one and free practice two.
“We’ve been in this situation before: A bit of a dodgy tummy, if they drive the car, adrenaline takes over and then in the evening they get better and we wholly expected Friday he’d be pretty much fit again. Obviously he’d probably be on the back foot a bit because he wasn’t fully up to speed on Thursday.
“But we didn’t see any of this coming to the extent where we would have said to Ollie: ‘Get yourself ready, you’re really going to drive this car’. Even on Thursday morning, Carlos was ringing and saying, ‘look, I’m coming in, I’ll drive and I’ll see how I go’. So he was probably thinking ‘please let me drive it’ but realistically it wasn’t until Friday morning that it was clear that now we’ve got to get him…
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