Oliver Bearman has commended the support of his Haas team after observing the chaos of the revolving door of driver changes across teams in Formula 1.
The British rookie is in his full debut season with the American squad, having made two stand-in appearances for them last year, as well as his attention-grabbing points-scoring maiden race with Ferrari in Saudi Arabia.
Three top 10 finishes so far have seen him take six points, leaving him in a respectable 16th place in the Drivers’ Championship.
Bearman appears to have stability within Haas, a stark comparison to other teams, including Alpine, which dumped Jack Doohan after just six races.
Bearman is grateful for how Haas is giving him the support he needs to thrive as he makes further steps in his F1 career.
“Haas have been incredibly supportive of me since the very beginning, which is great,” he told media including Motorsport Week. “I’m so glad to have them on my side, on my team.
“So far, we’ve had, I would say, a decent start to the season together. We’ve learnt a lot from each other and we have a lot of things to build on from now.”
Bearman ‘prone to mistakes’ at Haas
Bearman’s career got off to an unusual start, making his debut in the Ferrari at Jeddah last season off the back of Carlos Sainz’s emergency appendix surgery.
A mature and measured performance saw him finish seventh, a hugely impressive result at any circuit, even more so given the tricky and challenging Jeddah Corniche Circuit.
When asked if that performance has set an unlikely set of expectations for teams on rookie drivers, Bearman was inclined to agree, saying he finds driving the VF-25 harder than last year’s Ferrari SF-24.
“Yeah, but of course I made my debut in a Ferrari and there’s no way of denying that cars that are higher up the grid are more easy to drive,” he responded.
“There’s a bit more robustness in the aero platform of the car and therefore less prone to mistakes.
“And I’m even finding that myself, that despite having much more experience, I’m more prone to mistakes than I was last year in one race.
“So I do think it’s tough for him, but it’s not really massively comparable circumstances.”
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