The arrival of August means that the summer break is finally upon the ten Formula 1 teams, offering them some well-deserved respite in this longest ever grand prix season.
But 14 rounds in itself was enough for a full season for many editions of the world championship in years gone by, meaning it is more than enough of a sample size to compare the performance of the 20 drivers on the grid.
That is, if there were only 20 drivers in this year’s championship table.
Instead, the driver who is currently sitting in 14th place in the championship standings hasn’t even competed since early March: Oliver Bearman.
The Formula 2 racer and Ferrari junior was handed a sudden and unexpected grand prix debut for no lesser a team than Ferrari back in Saudi Arabia when Carlos Sainz Jnr was forced to withdraw from the race weekend in Jeddah with a sudden bout of appendicitis. Despite having secured pole for that weekend’s F2 feature race, Bearman jumped into Sainz’s SF24 on Saturday morning, giving him only a single hour of practice to get up to speed with his new car ahead of qualifying.
The 18-year-old only just missed out on Q3 by a matter of milliseconds to line up a respectable 11th on the grid, given the circumstances. But in the race, he showed no signs of nerves as he overtook several cars and demonstrated impressive tyre management given his lack of experience to move up the order.
Heading into the closing laps of the race, he kept a cool head and managed to keep out of reach of Lando Norris, who was approaching behind to finish in seventh – ahead of seven-times world champion Lewis Hamilton in the process. Much like Liam Lawson and Nyck de Vries before him, Bearman had become the latest F1 debutant to step into an unfamiliar car at very short notice and put in a very impressive and professional drive when given the chance.
Naturally, despite having put in one of the most outstanding showings of the season so far, Bearman cannot be ranked against his fellow F1 drivers on the basis of a single weekend alone. However, he will be joining the grid with Haas next season, where he will then have to face the same level of scrutiny as all of his rivals.
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Formula 1
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