Oliver Bearman has admitted his errors that caused his F1 Australian GP qualifying to descend into disaster.
After his eye-catching substituting performances in 2024, the Australian GP should have marked the next step in the Briton’s career.
Instead, Bearman suffered a horror show, crashing in two practice sessions, losing valuable track time.
The first crash on Friday caused significant damage to his VF-25, requiring a near complete rebuild of the car, resulting in missing the afternoon session.
In need of a clean day on Saturday, he spun off minutes into the final practice session on Saturday. This destroyed all hope of a good qualifying result.
However, a gearbox failure as left the pits in qualifying curtailed his running, leaving Bearman at the back of the grid for tomorrow’s race.
Oliver Bearman admits his errors
Speaking to media after qualifying, Bearman admitted that his errors were caused by “clumsiness”.
He recognised the pressure placed on his team, and said that Haas’ pace was disappointing compared to Bahrain testing.
“I mean, pretty unforgiving circuit, and two seemingly small errors giving big consequences and missing out on all of my running.
“Clumsiness from my side to make these errors honestly, and that’s not good enough. And then, of course, the gearbox issue in the qualifying pretty much sums up what we’ve had so far.
It’s a long season ahead of us. I’m not going to get down about two days in a very long season. I think as a team, we’re struggling a bit more than we anticipated and more than we looked in Bahrain, so, we’ve got a bit of work to do on that side of things, on pure car performance – and of course, I haven’t helped out very much, because the team’s pretty much been running with one car all weekend.
He revealed that despite the plethora of damage, Haas Team Principal Ayao Komatsu offered ‘encouragement’ in the face of his difficult weekend.
“I think the first thing is that I’m my biggest critic, and I’m the most disappointed in myself, and need to rectify that, but nothing, [Komatsu has offered, ed.] only encouragement.”
Bearman’s below-par performance in Melbourne starkly contrasts his performances last season. Lauded for his racecraft, and one lap speed, his eventful Australian GP weekend has so far been far removed from the flashes of brilliance seen in 2024.
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