Bearman was in the top 10 for the second time in two races
Oliver Bearman continues to impress at the Haas Formula 1 team, and the young Brit caught the eye in Suzuka by comprehensively outperforming team mate Esteban Ocon.
To be fair it was a slightly tougher weekend for the Frenchman. From the start of the weekend Bearman had the team’s new floor, fast tracked to the car after it proved difficult in Australia.
Ocon in contrast got it for Saturday, and thus only had FP3 in which to optimise the car and get fully comfortable prior to qualifying.
While Bearman qualified 10th and finished in the same position as he logged a useful point, Ocon had to settle for starting 18th, and he wasn’t able to make progress from there.
Like other drivers who have switched teams Ocon is still finding his feet, and it’s also worth recalling that he had the better weekend in China, outpacing Bearman and taking eighth on the road and sixth in the final results.
Nevertheless Suzuka was a statement of intent from Bearman, who has quickly overcome the disappointment of a huge practice crash in Australia.
Japan was a straightforward race for him.
“Pretty boring, I was pretty lonely out there, a bit sleepy,” he said when I asked him about his afternoon. “It was a fun race. With the temperatures dropping like they did today, and the track kind of resetting overnight with the rain, the grip was incredibly high, and the level of pushing was also incredibly high.
“The tyres were super robust today, and it was basically just a flat-out race, and I didn’t quite have enough pace to attack, and I wasn’t slow enough to be attacked either. So it was a bit lonely.”
Bearman confirmed that the revised floor worked well, and he also made an intriguing observation that suggests he might less affected than Ocon by the car’s quirks.
“For me, it seems positive,” he said. “So I’m happy with that. The team has done a great job bringing it so quickly after the upset of Australia. So I think we did a great reaction, and for it to work as expected is a good feeling. Let’s see how it how it performs on the rest of the tracks that we have in this triple header.
“We just had a little bit less bouncing in those high-speed corners, which, anyway, I feel like I’m not super sensitive to, so with or without the floor, I don’t complain that much about bouncing. I’m used to F2 which doesn’t have suspension, essentially. So anything’s an upgrade!
“And the floor has definitely improved the bouncing, and it doesn’t really change the feeling for us. But it allows us to run the car a bit more aggressively, and get a bit more performance out of it, which is good. And it seems like it’s worked this weekend.”
Ocon meanwhile downplayed the suggestion that only having Saturday to get used to the new floor was the reason why he struggled.
“I think it’s a bit more complicated than that,” said the Frenchman. “I think it’s good overall, that the teams managed to bring this update this quickly and react this this quickly. It worked on one car, which is very good.
“We need to pick that up, understand the data from Ollie’s side, and it’s good that he’s managed to pick up a point. And yeah, we are very happy on that side. Now it’s just a matter of turning it into our car as well. And no doubt that this will come too.”
Team boss Ayao Komatsu insisted that as of Saturday the two cars were identical.
“The data is pretty clear,” he said. “It’s working. So we haven’t understood why Esteban couldn’t perform. Both cars as far as we can see, are performing very, very close to each other within the resolution of what we can measure? Not to say there might be something that we cannot measure, but so far, we haven’t found anything.”
Bearman hadn’t sampled any of the first three tracks in an F1 car, although he knew Melbourne from F2, and Suzuka from a Super Formula test.
He now goes to two venues that he has sampled in faster machinery, including Jeddah, where he actually raced last year.
“Every weekend I’ve done so far has had a mistake somewhere,” said the teenager. “Maybe not China, but this one completing the full weekend without any bad points, good qualifying, good race, I’m happy with this one, and it’s a good baseline to improve from.
“I’m definitely excited to go to tracks that I know. At the end, it doesn’t change much by the time you get to qualifying, because even here, having three free practices is enough to learn the track for most.
“So it really all comes down to how comfortable I am in the car. This weekend, I felt really confident to push and lean on it. And if I have that feeling, I hope we can be that competitive in the future races too.”
Adam Cooper F1 