Oliver Bearman has been involved in F1 weekends before, taking part in the FP1 session as a reserve, most recently at the Hungarian Grand Prix, and in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, where he ran in the PF3 in place of the unwell Carlos Sainz Jr., before taking part in and completing qualifying and the race.
However, this weekend's Azerbaijan Grand Prix will mark his first full F1 weekend, driving in place of Kevin Magnussen for Haas, following Magnussen's one-race suspension. After Friday's two practice sessions, Bearman has clear goals in mind for the remainder of the weekend.
pride.
The effort got off to a great start, with Bearman finishing 11th in FP1 and 10th in FP2.
“It was good to take it one step at a time and have a full Friday without rushing. I was very happy with how the day went and finished and I had confidence in the car, which is important at a track like this,” Bearman said in the team's post-session report. “My goal tomorrow is to be able to be proud of my performance, and to do that I need to improve and finish at the level I know I'm capable of and put in a clean performance.”
Meanwhile, at the other end of the garage, Haas' Nico Hulkenberg also had a good Friday, finishing 12th in FP1 and 8th in FP2.
“Today wasn't bad, it wasn't perfect, but it was a practice day. We had a day to get to know this very interesting and intense circuit again. It was very dusty, the grip conditions were very poor this morning, the surface changed a lot throughout the day, and it was important to know the changes in the circuit today,” Hulkenberg said. “We didn't have a very clean run on the low-fuel soft tyres, but that's OK, we just need to learn from there, understand the package and understand the tyres. It was a positive day and we have a good basis to be competitive starting this weekend.”
Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu praised the young driver and said it had been a “good” day for the team.
“It was a really good day today. FP1 was a decent start but we needed to make some adjustments. As is often the case here, we took into account the big changes in the track surface and the feedback from the engineering side was very good,” Komatsu said. “We weren't able to maximise everything in terms of both low and high fuel consumption performance, but we have some good lessons learned and a clear direction to achieve, so it was a good Friday. Ollie did a great job again in both sessions and he's a fast learner so we're very happy for him.”
