Ollie Bearman qualified 11th and achieved 7th place getting the best driver vote by a significant margin.
It was a typical day for Bearman when on Friday he received a call from Ferrari to replace Carlos Sainz for the weekend. Bearman, who is racing with Prema in Formula 2 this season, was scheduled to take part in the Saudi Arabia event and had taken pole position for the feature race.
On Friday, Ferrari announced that Carlos Sainz would sit out the rest of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, with the Ferrari driver having been diagnosed with appendicitis following two days of illness.
Bearman, Ferrari’s reserve driver, had to step in for the weekend and he certainly delivered. The 18-year-old British driver showed promise right from the start.
During the qualifying stages, the young Brit narrowly missed out on Q3. Hamilton just edged him out by a mere 36 milliseconds.
Ollie’s race performance
Starting from the 11th grid position, the rookie was equipped with soft tires to enable him to attack and make up positions. Bearman had to take evasive action to avoid contact with Yuki Tsunoda by bailing out to the runoff area. By lap x, Bearman managed to keep his car behind Yuki Tsunoda.
In lap 6, Lance Stroll made contact with the wall, resulting in a crash that brought out the safety car. Drivers like Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez, Fernando Alonso, and others rushed to the pit lane for a quick pit stop. Bearman made the call: “Box Box” and switched to a set of Hard tires. Exiting the pit lane, Bearman remained in 11th place, but now Zhou Guanyu was ahead of him.
The set of Hard tires indicated a long stint, and Bearman was prepared for it. Everyone had pitted except for four cars. Norris, Hamilton, Nico, and Zhou opted to continue with their current tires. However, Lewis Hamilton was not pleased with his team’s decision.
In lap 13, Bearman made a move to the left of Zhou and entered the points. Bearman then set his sights on Hulkenberg, who had not yet pitted. Ollie Bearman, on a fresh set of tires, managed to overtake Nico Hulkenberg on lap 21 at the same corner where he passed Zhou.
Bearman was now in 9th position, and things were looking excellent for the debutant. His pace was strong as he aimed to gain more positions.
Hamilton made a pit stop on lap 37 to change to a set of soft tires, causing him to come out of the pitlane 7.388 seconds behind Bearman. On lap 38, Lando Norris also entered the pit lane to switch to a set of hard tires. At this point, Bearman was in 7th position, trailing George Russell by 5.791 seconds. Bearman was matching Russell’s pace on the track.
With his fresh set of tires, Norris posed a potential threat to Bearman. However, in order to have a chance to overtake Bearman, Norris needed to lap more than 0.5 seconds faster than him with only 12 laps remaining. Meanwhile, Hamilton was right behind Norris, putting Norris in a defensive position instead of attacking Bearman.
Although Norris had the opportunity to challenge Bearman, Bearman now had some breathing room. He just needed to maintain his pace and bring the car to the checkered flag.
By lap 49 Norris was 2.35 sec behind Bearman. Ollie Bearman crossed the checkered flag in 7th position.
Ollie Bearman, the youngest Ferrari F1 team driver to debut and score points created history. Ollie was voted as The Driver of the day.
Upon being asked about his performance Ollie said: “Difficult circumstances, you know, Not a lot of laps on track, but I think we maximize everything today. Yeah, I I felt like I was a bit quicker than Alonso and Russell in front, but not enough to catch. The gap was pretty big. I lost a lot of time trying to overtake Hulkenberg, who used his experience to to keep me back for a few more laps and he should have. So that’s that’s my bad. But no, it was a it was a good, good.”
Know more:-https://theathletic.com/5329042/2024/03/09/ollie-bearman-f1-debut-ferrari/
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