Bearman Credits Sainz And Leclerc For 'Fantastic' Help During His First Race

Friday, 15 March 2024 at 01:45

Updated at Friday, 15 March 2024 at 09:52

Bearman scored an amazing result during the first F1 race of his career. In a recent interview, he revealed how much the Ferrari drivers helped him.

At the beginning of the season, Fernando Alonso complained about how challenging it is for F1 drivers to go into a race on the first race weekend with only 15 hours (pre-season testing plus 3 FP sessions) of on-track practice with their cars.

Now, try to imagine the 18-year-old Oliver Bearman, who hasn't sat in the current generation of F1 car at all and who learned that he would be driving only a few hours ahead of the Qualifying session in Jeddah.

The youngster drove on the simulator previously, but that doesn't prepare the driver for what will come in the real world. Amazingly, he finished qualifying and the race around one of the most challenging circuits in the F1 calendar.

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The Briton revealed that he wasn't satisfied with his qualifying performance, where he achieved P11. On the other hand, he was much happier with the race. As reported by Race Fans, he said:

"At least Saturday in the race. I feel like I managed to prepare a lot better. We had a full day to do so rather than a couple of hours' notice. Overall I was quite happy with how the race went."

The 18-year-old also revealed he received numerous invaluable tips and advice from the two Ferrari drivers, Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, who did what they could to help him.

"To get the tips from Charles during the weekend, especially in qualifying, but even before the race and Carlos during the race, he was pretty much guiding me through what he saw in the data and was feeding it to my engineer, it was fantastic. It really helped me speed up the learning process and I got up to speed a lot quicker because of them."