High Praise for Ollie Bearman
In a recent statement, Jock Clear, the head of young driver development at the Ferrari Driver Academy, expressed his lack of surprise at Ollie Bearman’s outstanding performance during his stint with the Scuderia team. Clear highlighted the trust that both Ferrari and Frederic Vasseur had in Bearman, evident by his selection to fill in for the regular drivers.
“I was convinced beforehand, and I believe that Fred was brave enough to put him in that car this weekend under those circumstances, speaks volumes about what we have already seen of him,” Clear mentioned in an interview with the official F1 website.
“I don’t want to downplay the achievement, we are truly ecstatic, but we kind of put him in there thinking we believed he could do it. And he absolutely justified that choice.”
Unexpected Opportunity for Bearman
When Carlos Sainz realized he wouldn’t be able to participate in the weekend, Bearman had already missed the chance to drive during the first two practice sessions on Thursday, expecting to regain his chance later on.
“We saw Carlos on Wednesday night, we were all in the same restaurant, he was happy, having a good meal. On Thursday, he showed up and said he wasn’t feeling well. He arrived late, wasn’t feeling great, but felt able to at least do the first and second free practices.”
“We had experienced this situation before: a slightly upset stomach, if they drive the car, adrenaline kicks in, and then by the evening, they feel better, and we fully expected him to be roughly back to normal on Friday. Obviously, he would probably be a bit off because he wasn’t quite well on Thursday.”
“But we didn’t see anything coming to the point of telling Ollie, ‘get ready, you’re really going to drive this car.’ Even on Thursday morning, Carlos called us to say, ‘listen, I’m coming, I’ll drive and see how I get on.’ It wasn’t until Friday morning that it became clear that we had to let him drive.”
Impressive Performance Under Unforeseen Circumstances
Clear commended Bearman’s performance as even more remarkable considering he had only taken part in one practice session, which was interrupted by a red flag: “I couldn’t have hoped for a better weekend for Ollie.”
“If you had scripted the scenario, we might have doubted the end result, we would have said ‘let’s be realistic.’ If he had known two weeks ago that he would be racing, he would have mentally prepared. We could have done some things differently.”
“We could have practiced a few starts. But when you let him go on Friday morning,