The focus heading into this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix has understandably centred on how the title fight between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris will play out as the Formula One season enters its final third. That competition might yet go to the wire, but in their wake one of F1’s most highly rated young talents, Britain’s Oliver Bearman, has a chance to make his own mark in Baku.
As Verstappen and Norris go head to head, Bearman, the 19-year-old from Chelmsford who will join them on the grid when he makes his full-time debut in F1 next season, will be looking to live up to the hype that has accompanied his rise.
In Azerbaijan, Bearman is competing in his first full F1 race weekend standing in for Haas’s Kevin Magnussen, who is on a one-race ban for reaching 12 penalty points. This is not Bearman’s debut however; he made that in March driving for Ferrari in Saudi Arabia.
With that grand prix on a Saturday, Bearman had been called up on the Friday morning to replace Carlos Sainz, who had to pull out with appendicitis. In Jeddah, the British driver had one practice session before qualifying and the race, climbing into a car he had never driven before with only scant preparation.
As a Ferrari academy driver since 2021 and their reserve driver this season, the Scuderia felt confident he could step up and he did so beyond expectation. He qualified in 11th, missing Q3 by only three-hundredths of a second and finished in seventh place. In so doing, he became the youngest British driver to compete in an F1 race and the youngest F1 driver to score points on their debut.
He took to the task with remarkable ease, but the circumstances were exceptional. Given the short notice, the pressure was perhaps minimal, as he observed afterwards. “There was no time to have nerves or think about the gravity of the situation,” he said.
This weekend is different. Haas signed the youngster on a multi-year deal in July this year. He was not expected to make his debut with the team until Australia next season but by doing so now he will be closely watched. He has a full weekend, a chance to work properly with engineers to extract the maximum from a car far from a Ferrari, with Haas at the bottom end of midfield.
Before practice in Baku, he was acutely aware that with a chance for a full weekend, expectations would be higher.
“I just want to build up step by step because we have time to do that,” he said. “We have three sessions this weekend and I just want to maximise myself and gain experience. It will be the most sessions I’ve ever done in F1 in a single time.”
How Bearman manages this task in what will be the day job in barely six months’ time will be indicative of how quickly he can adapt as he works toward his dream of promotion to Ferrari in the future.
On track on Friday, he delivered everything that might be expected. In first practice he was 11th, in front of his vastly more experienced teammate Nico Hülkenberg. And while the German was quicker in eighth in the afternoon, Bearman was once more a very solid 10th.
His F2 campaign this year has not been plain sailing as he adapts to the championship’s new car. It is, impressively, a process he has taken inspiration from in that every year there is a new car and last year he won for his Prema team in both the sprint and feature races in F2 at Baku, so it is a circuit where he has no little confidence. If he is able to convert Friday’s running into a top-10 spot in qualifying on Saturday and a strong race, that would augur well for 2025.
At the sharp end, the Red Bull team principal, Christian Horner, acknowledged that despite Verstappen’s 62-point lead over Norris he believed the title fight could turn in a moment. “There is everything to play for,” he said. “You can’t take anything for granted. It only takes a couple of bad weekends – and big weekends from Lando – and suddenly it is an awful lot closer.” Despite their recent problems with the balance of the Red Bull, Verstappen was quickest in Baku in first practice from Lewis Hamilton, with Norris fourth. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc headed the timesheets in the second session, from Red Bull’s Sergio Pérez, with Norris, who had to abort his only hot lap, in 17th.
