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Oliver Bearman’s outstanding weekend in Saudi Arabia almost certainly secure him a seat on the 2025 grid, but the effects of his performance could — and perhaps should — be much further reaching.
Expectations were kept in check when Bearman was hauled from his Formula 2 to substitute for Carlos Sainz shortly before final practice. Sainz had been rushed to hospital for an appendectomy, and Bearman was the reserve driver on hand to cover for him.
The Jeddah Corniche Circuit is one of the sport’s most mentally and physically demanding tracks. Though he got a taste of it in his F2 car in qualifying the day before, F1 is an entirely different challenge.
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As an example, Bearman’s Formula 2 pole time came in at 1 minute 42.217 seconds. His best F1 qualifying time was 13.575 seconds faster — and he would have gone quicker still had it not been for a small mistake on his flying lap.
The 18-year-old mastered the step change beautifully. He qualified 11th and was less than 0.1 seconds outside Q3, and he raced to seventh at the flag.
On the way he made some excellent instinctive passes, and he had to hold off Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton at the end.
Ferrari boss Frédéric Vasseur called the performance “unrealistic”. Charles Leclerc described it as “extremely impressive”.
Bearman had already been treading the path to Formula 1 thanks to his Ferrari affiliation.
Though his difficult first Formula 2 campaign last year dampened expectations, his pair of FP1 appearances for Haas late in 2023 impressed now team boss Ayao Komatsu, and he was fielded by the American team in the post-season test.
This year he’s set to represent Haas in six — not the minimum two, but six — FP1 sessions, and Vasseur has since added two more for Ferrari.
The signs couldn’t be clearer that Ferrari is preparing to secure Bearman a full-time drive, likely at Haas, in 2025 — as his performance warrants.
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WHERE DID ALL THE ROOKIES GO?
If Bearman does get himself onto the grid, it’ll be a welcome change for a sport that’s seen its driver market grow stale.
The 2024 season was the first in F1 history to feature no regular year-on-year line-up changes.
It’s part of a trend.
Between 2015 and 2019 the sport welcomed Max Verstappen, Carlos Sainz, Esteban Ocon, Lance Stroll, Pierre Gasly, Charles Leclerc, Alex Albon, George Russell and Lando Norris to the grid — nine mainstays in just five seasons.
Since 2021 only Yuki Tsunoda, Zhou Guanyu, Logan Sargeant and Oscar Piastri have found space for themselves, a near halving of the hit rate.
In that same time, however, we’ve also seen the return of Kevin Magnussen, Fernando Alonso, Nico Hülkenberg and Daniel Ricciardo.
The latter four can all justify their seats, but there’s also no denying that it’s in part thanks to their presence — along with some others — that the pipeline to F1 has effectively closed.
Conservatism has gripped the driver market. Teams would rather bank on a steady pair of hands than cop the risks associated with looking for the sport’s next star.
But Bearman might finally have cracked that back open by reminding the grid that Formula 2 drivers — including ones with only three feature victories to their name — are viable drivers.
And with 13 seats still uncontracted for next season, it’s happened at just the right time for some young guns to argue their cases.
Internal Red Bull war still simmering | 01:32
JACK DOOHAN
Step forward Jack Doohan.
Doohan is Australia’s next in line, and the 21-year-old is ideally placed at Alpine, where he’s spending the year as a dedicated reserve driver.
His junior CV is strong. He was runner-up to the F3 crown in 2021 and a race winner in his first F2 campaign the following year.
He was tipped for the 2023 title, but car problems wrote off the first half of his season. He battled back to third in the standings.
This year Alpine is putting him on a high-mileage test program to ready him for a possible 2025 debut, when both its senior drivers will be out of contract.
Speaking on the F1 Nation podcast after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Doohan said Bearman’s performance proved drivers like him were ready for their shot.
“It shows that a rookie in Formula 2 last year — coming into his second season, not even having finished his second year in Formula 2 — is ready to be in Formula 1,” he said.
“To be honest, I think for a driver like me — two years in Formula 2 and with quite a lot of mileage in a Formula 1 car — it does great justice as well.”
Englishman Bearman’s junior results don’t read spectacularly despite his obvious qualities, comprising two impressive F4 titles and a third in Formula 3.
Doohan, whose CV lacks titles but boasts greater frontrunning consistency, said it proved headline results alone aren’t enough to prove F1 readiness.
“Formula 2 is so close that if a team gets it right with the driver on its day, a team that doesn’t could be three tenths off,” he said. “You could be sitting at the tail end of the top 10 or even outside. That is the difference.
“Prema, with Ollie, he’s a top-tier and top-class driver. They didn’t get it right in Bahrain and they were P17 and P18 on the grid. They come to Jeddah and he’s qualified on pole — completely contrary to one week ago — and then showed he can jump into a Ferrari Formula 1 car and do very special things as well.
“It shows the calibre of the field is very high. It’s always been very high.
“Us young drivers are ready. These teams should take a chance on us.”
Doohan has previously identified that he’ll be the most experienced non-current driver on the market next year thanks to his season of private testing.
Combined with his F2 race-winning experience, Doohan is ready to make the step to Formula 1.
Piastri powers to fourth in Saudi Arabia | 01:44
LIAM LAWSON
Before Bearman came Liam Lawson, the Kiwi junior whose five-race substitution for the injured Daniel Ricciardo did much to open eyes to the wealth of talent sidelined by F1’s steadfast driver conservatism.
Lawson admitted he’d felt his name had dropped out of circulation before his unexpected call-up, but some gutsy drives — including points in challenging Singapore — proved he warranted a shot.
Unfortunately the cameo came too late in the year for him to enter the driver market, which by then had been effectively sewn up. Only Logan Sargeant was waiting for the nod for a second season.
Rather than loan him to Williams, Red Bull Racing opted to retain Lawson as a reserve driver with what appears to be the intention to give him an RB seat in 2025. That would imply that either Daniel Ricciardo or Yuki Tsunoda will be forced to make way.
While neither is done with F1 — and both still have ample time to mount strong arguments for retention — the point of Formula 1’s high turnover has always been to keep drivers motivated, and Lawson has already proved he deserves a shot at F1.
‘Another frustrating night for Ricciardo | 00:27
FELIPE DRUGOVICH
Formula 2000 champion. Euroformula Open champion. Spanish Formula 3 champion. Formula 2 champion.
What more does a driver have to do?
Felipe Drugovich is stuck with nothing more than an Aston Martin reserve role in part because his F2 title is being partially discounted for the fact he took three seasons to win it — too long by conventional paddock wisdom.
Generational talents — George Russell, Charles Leclerc, Oscar Piastri, Lando Norris — win or contend for the title in their first season.
Great drivers are given until the second season to win the championship.
A driver who takes until the third year to win the title is generally thought of — fairly or unfairly — as a lesser talent who wins mostly because they’re inevitably among the most experienced in a category of ferocious turnover.
It’s partly for that reason drivers like Doohan, having proved their potential, choose not to contend for a third time. There’s nothing to gain but lots to lose.
But then again, Drugovich dominated his campaign, winning the championship with three races to spare and with an eventual margin of 101 points. Some drivers simply bloom later than others.
Unfortunately remaining sidelined for a second year won’t help him argue his case — despite his obvious pedigree.
THÉO POURCHAIRE
Sauber junior Théo Pourchaire has an impressive CV comprising French and German Formula 4 titles. His sole Formula 3 campaign in 2020 then went down to the wire in a three-point loss to Oscar Piastri.
But he took too long to find his way in Formula 2 and accordingly suffers much the same fate as Drugovich before him.
That said, his results were reasonably strong in all three years. In 2021 he finished fifth in the tight pack chasing runaway champion Piastri, in 2022 he was runner-up to Drugovich and in 2023 he finally took the crown in a final-race showdown.
Pourchaire remains on the Sauber reserve driver roster while competing in Super Formula, presumably in the hope of emulating Lawson’s trajectory into the F1 conversation via the difficult Japanese series.
He could do so at exactly the right time too, with Audi accelerating its takeover of the Sauber team and with both Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu out of contract.
But some tar is harder to clean off than others. Despite his obvious talent, much like Drugovich, he seems destined to be frozen out of the conversation.
WHO ELSE?
Fortunately for any F1 teams considering taking a chance on a rookie, the Formula 2 crop is bursting with 2025 potential.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli is chief among them. The Mercedes junior is highly rated in Brackley to the point he’s being considered as a serious Lewis Hamilton replacement if he can contend for this year’s title.
Zane Maloney starts his second season in F2 as a title favourite. Backed by Sauber, the Barbadian opened the year with two victories in Bahrain and leads the standings.
Williams junior Zak O’Sullivan can put pressure on Logan Sargeant with a good first season in F2 after finishing runner-up in last year’s F3 campaign.
McLaren-backed Gabriel Bortoleto is the reigning Formula 3 champion and opened his maiden F2 campaign with two points-scoring finishes in Bahrain.
Combined with Bearman, that makes five active juniors and another four drivers knocking on the door to F1.
Nine drivers is enough to replace almost half the grid. Obviously some, if not most, won’t make it.
But Bearman has shown that sometimes a little ambition in driver selection can go a long way.
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