A proud Oliver Bearman said he realised a childhood dream by scoring points on his Formula 1 debut for Ferrari last weekend.
However the 18-year-old admitted there was ample room for improvement in his performance. He rose to finish seven in the race but qualified 11th, missing ther cut for the top 10 shoot-out by less than four hundredths of a second.
“From the outside it was a successful weekend,” said Bearman. “But I’m a perfectionist and I made a lot of mistakes – that I don’t blame myself for, obviously I kind of expected to make mistakes.
“But for example not making it to Q3, I should have made it to Q3. The car was fast enough, so that was my bad. It was a really scruffy Q2 session that meant I didn’t make it through, by the skin of my teeth.
“So that was unfortunate. But it’s all learnings that I’ll put into place next time. Hopefully there will be a next time.”
He also said he spent too long stuck behind Nico Hulkenberg’s Haas.
“During the race I lost quite a lot of time trying to overtake slower cars. Just not using my battery in the most efficient way because it’s new. I’ve never had to use the ERS in an offensive or defensive way.
“So it was the first time for me and I maybe wasn’t the best with it, especially with Nico, who did a great job of keeping me back. So I lost a lot of time, and I could have even finished one place higher, I think, if I managed to be a bit more efficient with my overtakes.”
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Bearman was preparing to take part in the Formula 1 sprint race on Friday when Ferrari told him he was needed to stand in for Carlos Sainz Jnr, who was unwell.
“On Friday I was having lunch, having done the pole in F2 [for the feature race], I was getting ready to start P10 in the sprint race and trying to figure out the best way to go about that when I got the call that I would be doing F1.
“It was quite a surprise and quite a happy surprise, of course. Not the circumstances that I wanted to make my debut, through the misfortune of someone else. But, still, it was a great opportunity.”
As Sainz had driven in the opening two days of practice on Thursday, Bearman one hour of running in the unfamiliar SF-24 before qualifying began.
“I just tried to get up to speed as quickly as possible. We managed to do a short race [simulation] run just to try…
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