Ollie Bearman was happy with his performance on Sunday at the F1 Australian GP after a weekend that was marred by crashes and techincal issues. He crossed the line in P14, last of the classified runners.
The weekend saw a difficult start for the Brit. With a crash in the early stages of FP1, Bearman was forced to watch FP2 from the garage while mechanics worked on the car. The team had the car fixed for FP3, but just three laps into the session Bearman spun off into the gravel and he was out.
Problems struck again when Bearman came out for qualifying reporting a gearbox issue immediately. Unfortunately, the issue took Bearman out of the running in Q1 and left him starting the F1 Australian GP in last.
However on Sunday Bearman had a clean race. Despite the conditions which took out the majority of his fellow rookies, Bearman and Antonelli found themselves as the only junior drivers to survive the rain.
The Haas still lacked the pace of the rest of the field. Nonetheless the Brit managed to end pretty much on par with his teammate. In the end, the weekend was a learning experience for both Haas and Ollie Bearman.
The positives
Ollie Bearman chose to look at the positives from the F1 Australian GP weekend, admitting that ending Sunday on a high gives him ‘confidence’ heading to Shanghai.
“You know, to finish the weekend in a good way on my side gives me good confidence heading into China.
“Even if, like I said, as a team, we’re missing a bit of pace. I have a bit of a better mindset now heading into China. Ready to put everything else behind me and restart again next week.”
He also said that despite the issues throughout the weekend he saw completing the race as an ‘achievement’. In fact it was. While a number of his colleagues crashed out or had big moments, the 19-year-old was solid.
“I think it’s an achievement just to finish a race like this because they’re incredibly difficult. This inter tyre is very tough when it starts to rain again. And I was happy with my performance and execution, even if as a team we’re still missing pace.”
Lack of data
One of the biggest problems for Bearman throughout Australia and now heading into Shanghai is the lack of data he managed to gather in dry-running conditions. He said he was left to rely largely on Esteban Ocon’s data and set-up.
It also hinders Haas as the team looks to figure out what is wrong with the VF-25. They were by far the slowest team in Melbourne in both dry and wet conditions.
“I really didn’t help the team by not running this weekend. And of course, between drivers, there’s always slightly different limitations. I can only rely on Esteban [Ocon]’s feedback, not having run with the car enough in the dry. So I think China will be a good baseline weekend to see really where the car stands.
“And now we have some laps under our belts, some data to gather, and hopefully we come back with a slightly better baseline in China as well.”
China also poses a relatively new challenge to Bearman as the second Sprint weekend of his career. With only one practice session for the team, Bearman will be hoping to have a far cleaner weekend than Australia — collecting as much on-track data as possible.
