It seemed the natural first question to ask Ollie Bearman because the last time we saw him on a racetrack he was stumbling away from a 191mph smash at the Japanese Grand Prix in Suzuka.
‘How are you, Ollie, after the accident?’
‘Good, mate,’ he responded.
‘A big one that?’ I tried to suggest the notion with a grimace of sympathy on my face, a look of ‘yikes’.
‘You are starting with some great questions there,’ retorted Bearman, half-smiling, half-salty, his memories of the incident at the end of last month clearly still playing on his mind. ‘It’s not very nice, is it!’
There has been no chance for the Essex-born driver, a rising Formula One star aged 20 with realistic dreams of driving for Ferrari one day, to return to the track since the smash at Spoon Curve presented the only punctuation mark to his soaring early-season form. The incident occurred as he was trying to overtake Alpine’s Franco Colapinto, who made a defensive move that played its part in a 50G shunt that left Bearman with a bruised right leg.
‘You are starting with some great questions there,’ retorts Ollie Bearman to Daily Mail Sport, when reminded of his 191mph smash at Suzuka last month
The smash at Spoon Curve occurred as he was trying to overtake Alpine’s Franco Colapinto, with the 50G shunt leaving Bearman with a bruised right leg
Truly putting it behind him requires another race to act as balm, and hopefully revive his confidence fully. The opportunity to get straight back on the metaphorical bike was denied him because the war in the Middle East erased the Bahrain and Saudi Arabia editions that were due to take place this month.
He apologised to his Haas team for his part in the accident, knowing it would land them with a thousand-time bigger bill than that visited on your table for a congenial lunch at the Savoy, the London hotel of legend where we conduct this interview with a piano tinkling behind his left shoulder.
But the other part that mitigates his slight miscalculation was that this year’s new regulations introduced a huge speed differential as drivers build up their battery power. The split between old-school combustion engine and electric is too arcane to dwell upon here – a dangerous blight on F1, though the FIA have correctly introduced various modifications ahead of Sunday’s Miami Grand Prix to soothe the teething pains.
‘It’s not the end of the world but not a moment I was planning on,’ said Bearman of his prang. ‘For example, I was back home on Monday. I was on the simulator on Wednesday morning. It was just at the time when the adrenaline went down there was some pain in my leg, but it was short-lived. If the cancelled races had been on, I’d have been fine to drive.
‘The drivers have spoken to the FIA about these big speed deltas causing dangerous situations and I was a bit unhappy to be the guinea pig on that. The good thing is that the FIA are very receptive to our ideas and I am confident we will work everything out.’
We will get on to more glorious topics in a moment, but in a final word on the big accident, which has shaken the sport’s rule-makers as well as Bearman, he adds: ‘At the end of last year, a lot of us drivers were pushing our defensive moves to the absolute limit.
‘We were all close – eight-tenths covering us in qualifying and in the race. It was hard to pull off an overtaking move. The regs were mature – more than 10 years old with engines and more than five with the chassis.
‘Last year, Franco’s defence would have been on the absolute limit but with five-times the speed delta it was dangerous.’
Cycling fan Bearman has made the most of his downtime courtesy of cancelled races in the Middle East, attending the Paris-Roubaix to watch his friend Tadej Pogacar
His passion for cycling helps the 20-year-old offset his devotion to Percy Pigs
Well, moving on now, in a literal sense Bearman is back on his bike. Cycling is his self-declared favourite hobby, enjoyed in the French Riviera from his home in Monaco. ‘I love being in the mountains,’ he said.
‘I could spend hours up there.
‘I went to see my friend Tadej (Pogacar, the four-time winner of the Tour de France, with whom he rides) compete in the Paris-Roubaix.
‘It was the first cycling race I had been to. The Tour de France once started in my home town, Chelmsford, but I was too young to join my mum and dad who went to see it go down the high street. To see the peloton for the first time was so impressive.
‘I am a decent amateur cyclist. But when I compare myself to those guys, I am very, very slow.’
Nico Rosberg once gave up cycling so as not to add extra muscle weight around his knees and thighs in an all-out attempt to beat Lewis Hamilton, as he did successfully in 2016, and I wonder whether at 6ft 2in there is any danger in that for Bearman.
‘It is a trade-off,’ he reasoned. ‘You gain a bit of muscle but it also keeps the fat levels down so it works quite well. I have had to watch that over the last year as I’ve grown. But hopefully I won’t do any more growing… vertically.
‘The rules dictate that you have to be 82kilos with race suit and helmet when you are weighed. So that means being 79 kilos (12st 6lb) yourself. I have had to watch that over the break (he loves eating sweets, namely Percy Pigs and Colin the Caterpillar Fruit Sours from M&S), so that’s why I have been cycling!’
Haas are doing extremely well on limited resources, running the lowest budget on the grid, and lie fourth in the constructors’ championship
Essex-born Bearman is ultra-loyal to the team, but Ferrari is where he would like to end up
Haas are doing extremely well on limited resources, running the lowest budget on the grid, and lie fourth in the constructors’ championship with Bearman and his team-mate Esteban Ocon contributing points under the astute leadership of team principal Ayao Komatsu.
Bearman is ultra-loyal to the team, but Ferrari is where he would like to end up. It is where he started in F1, indeed, having been handed the seat for Jeddah in 2024 when Carlos Sainz went down with appendicitis. He had been brought into the Scuderia’s development programme three years earlier, so he is enmeshed in the Italian team.
Joining the Ferrari scheme entailed leaving home, his family, including his English Bull Terrier and Boston Terrier, to ask of the gods his destiny, a move to Maranello that leaves him with a non-Essex accent and one that is impossible to pin down, with its pan-European inflections. The relocation was a sign of his ambition, even having to fight off his mother Terri’s desire to see him finish his studies at King Edward VI Grammar School.
So, what about a full-time drive at Ferrari, if say Lewis Hamilton were to retire in the next year or two?
‘I feel like I am ready,’ he declared. ‘If I didn’t say that, it wouldn’t be worth going to the track. I am young and have years to go. I just want to give them a reason for me to be a choice.
‘The faster I drive, the better my chances are.
‘I concentrate on myself, on giving my best performances for Haas. Just as the team debrief after every weekend, I do the same internally and with my coach as well. We make sure there is no stone left unturned.
‘I feel like I am ready,’ declares Bearman of his prospects of making the leap to Ferrari full-time. ‘If I didn’t say that, it wouldn’t be worth going to the track’
‘It is not necessarily about the result you have achieved but about personal performance. You need to have no ego, no fear of criticising yourself. But you need a good level of self-confidence.
‘That allows you not to push blame elsewhere. For now, I am loving every minute of it.’
Bruised a few weeks ago, ‘The Bear’ is ready to fly again.
Now we’re old and grey Fernando
Fernando Alonso, speaking at the Historic Grand Prix of Monaco, indicated he wants to carry on for another season.
At 44, and 25 years after he made his debut for Minardi, Aston Martin’s veteran Spaniard said: ‘For now, I am loving every minute of it.’
Some drivers never stop. Turning through the pages of history, the pre-War great Tazio Nuvolari never wanted to approach the final bend. Aged 55, he drove through Modena in the Mille Miglia of 1948. His bonnet was blown off, the car was lilting because of a broken spring, he had thrown out his seat and instead sat on a bag of oranges.
Enzo Ferrari watched this scene of defiance, turned away and wept.
Nuvolari remind you of anyone?
Aged 44, Fernando Alonso (left) is keen to race on. But so was a 55-year-old Tazio Nuvolari (pictured at the wheel) at the 1948 Mille Miglia, a sight that left Enzo Ferrari weeping
A Middle East revival? Don’t be so sure…
Rumours surface that the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix may be reinserted into the calendar. I doubt this. The programme is packed and the summer heat in the Middle East precludes the race being staged during its hottest season.
The travelling troops are already exhausted by the interminable length of the modern calendar, now a ‘mere’ 22 races after the two omissions. So troubles there.
And that is before we get on to safety implications.
Another important sporting consideration is that the championship should not be distorted by the last-minute insertion of an extra race or two, offering a random 50 points as a potentially crucial moment in the season.
It would be like adding five minutes of fictitious stoppage-time to a football match. An undeserving winner might be scored in a final phoney minute.
