Oliver Bearman could be forgiven for thinking that the world is against him right now after two frustrating qualifying sessions saw him stranded at the back of the grid.
And yet there is clearly some potential in the Haas package that he can take advantage of given a clean weekend in Spain.
At Imola he missed getting his final lap in after a red flag in Q1, a decision that was challenged by his team. That left him as the last car on the grid in P19, with Yuki Tsunoda switching to a pitlane start. From there he had a frustrating race to P17.
In Monaco he was again caught out by a red flag, this time in practice, after he opted to pass a slow Carlos Sainz rather than stand on the brakes and stay behind the Williams.
He thought he was doing the right thing, but the stewards took a dim view, and gave him a 10-place grid penalty.
Inevitably from P20 it was going to be a long slog, and yet despite a slow pit stop he managed to convert it to P12 at the finish – a decent performance given that only two cars retired.
However, Esteban Ocon’s solid run to seventh place showed what might have been.
“Of course, feeling a little bit hard done by,” he said when I asked him about the penalty after the session. “But I don’t want to get too much into the details. Different things, but same outcome, unfortunately.
“I feel like it was a harsh penalty, honestly, for everything that happened. I felt like there were some mitigating circumstances, namely the huge delta speed and the lack of time I had to react. But c’est la vie.”
Expanding on the transgression he added: “I don’t know what the standard penalty is. It’s quite a rare thing, but I feel like we’re in a street track, against the walls, and in a split second, I have to decide whether to slow down 120kph in 60 metres, or overtake the guy at a safe speed.
“Of course, I didn’t want to lock up and hit him. That would have been an absolute disaster, and I think I would have been in a lot more trouble than what I was now. But I think given the circumstances, I think I could have been dealt with a bit more kindly.”
Adding to the frustration was the fact that he couldn’t get any solace from showing what he could do in qualifying, because of the risk of knocking Ocon out.
In the end he had to settle for P17 in Q1 after abandoning his final lap.
“The only thing was I didn’t want to be in Q2 at the expense of the wrong person,” he noted. “If it happened that it played out and I knocked my teammate out of Q2 that would have been a disaster. So I’m glad we didn’t do that.
“I had to slow down at the end of the lap, but I understand. I’m starting 20th anyway, regardless of what happens, and I wouldn’t want to get in the way of anyone. The goal was maybe to be in Q2, and knock out a competitor. But of course, I don’t want to knock out an ally.”
Bearman was one of several drivers to go for the first lap tyre change strategy, but despite losing time with a wheel issue he ultimately made more progress up the order than others who took that route.
“We had a decent race,” he said. “The best we could have done today was this, really. We were lucky not to be affected by a slow stop.
“I think unless we had five or six other cars stopping on lap one, we were going to take the lap one stop. The problem is that regardless of what you do, the pack when it’s driving kind of six seconds slower, there’s nothing you can really do about it.”
The result may have gone largely unnoticed, but Monaco was a good boost for Bearman.
“In terms of personal performance, it was a really good weekend,” he noted. “I performed at a very high level, in my opinion, like I did in Imola. So I’m proud of myself, and I think the team have also done an excellent job this weekend.
“It’s been a tough one with this 10-place penalty, which unfortunately hindered our weekend, and meant that today the maximum we could have done was P12.
“But I’m really excited to get to Barcelona, and hopefully we can have a representative weekend of what we’ve been showing, or maybe hiding in a way, these past two weekends.”
It’s clear that upgrades introduced in Imola have been a boost, and Barcelona will be a chance for Bearman to reap the benefit.
“I’m almost certain points were there this weekend,” he said. “If I look at my performance, there was clearly pace in the car, no doubt about that.
“And of course, very happy to see Esteban scoring points on a weekend was more difficult on my side of the garage. But Esteban showed that there’s pace in the car, and there’s a lot of pace in the car.
“I think even if you look at the pace in free air in Imola, it looks quite good. The car has been feeling great.
“I think we just need to get the clear air, which is a bit more difficult. I just want to have a normal weekend now, without interruptions, without qualifying out of position, because that has been the case in the past two weekends.
“And I’ve been going off the back row for the past few race weekends. And nothing’s easy from back there…”
Adam Cooper F1 