Oliver Bearman was surprised to finish seventh on his debut in Jeddah after being chased by rivals on softer tyres at the end of the race.
The Ferrari substitute driver moved up four places from his starting position to finish seventh on his debut.But when Lewis Hamilton and Lando Norris emerged from the pits behind him with 12 laps to go, Bearman expected they would pass him. The Ferrari driver was running a worn set of hard compound tyres, while his pursuers had switched to softs.
“I saw on the screen that they were pitting,” Bearman told the official F1 channel, “I knew they were coming out and I knew they would be on at least a medium or a soft, at least a faster tyre. I could see them on my dash coming quite quickly, but then the gap started to stabilise.
“When they left the pits I basically accepted that they were going to come by at some point. then at some point they started to slow down and then eventually stabilised. So it wasn’t that stressful.”
He had to make his hard compound tyres last longer than planned after an early Safety Car period, during which he discarded the softs he started on.
“It was a bit unfortunate with the Safety Car, it didn’t play into our hands. But that stint at the end on the hard, especially on the final laps when I had the guys on soft behind, it was flat-out. It was like quali lap after lap, which was really fun.”
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It was a great race,” he added. “I think we managed everything pretty well.”
Once the threat from behind faded, Bearman backed off to ensure he reached the chequered flag. “In the last three laps I took a bit of more margin to the walls,” he said.
Bearman admitted the words of team principal Frederic Vasseur were ringing in his ears. “That was a lot of pressure, of course, especially from Fred. The walls are close here and he wanted me to bring back the car with four wheels still on it.”
However Bearman said he could have done a better job of overtaking Nico Hulkenberg, who he was stuck behind for several laps after his pit stop.
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“I think I executed a good race. My only regret is that I was a bit inefficient trying to pass Nico. Because, honestly, I was in a faster car, and I should have overtook him more quickly.
“He used his experience well to use the battery in the right places and it took me a couple of shots. The problem is, when you drain the battery trying to overtake and you don’t get it done, you have to wait a couple of laps to recharge, and that lost me a lot of time to the guys ahead.
“After that the gap [to the leaders] stayed pretty similar but I lost a bit of time there. But overall I was pretty happy.”
Bearman admitted he was in some discomfort after completing his first grand prix distance. “It doesn’t feel good now, but those things you kind of have to adjust after you’ve driven in it.
“I did the seat fit, it felt fine, but when you drive, especially on a track like this, I think I’ll feel it in the morning.”
“It was tough,” he added. “I’m quite tall so I struggle a little bit to fit perfectly in the car. My back hurts a little bit and especially my shoulders as well.”
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2024 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix
- Vowles being patient with Sargeant but expects to see “progress”
- “So I’ve got nothing to worry about?” – The best unheard team radio from Jeddah
- “Shock” of poor start to season showed need for change at Alpine – Famin
- “My tyres are dying”: Stroll’s short-lived struggle until he hit the wall
- Bearman calls Ferrari debut a “dream” but admits “I made a lot of mistakes”
Sham (@sham)
10th March 2024, 12:28
Bearman was on hard tyres.
Osnola
10th March 2024, 12:52
When you look at the headrest you see his neck needs some extra training.
Great stuff by this one and only rookie in the field.
MGus.ai
10th March 2024, 13:12
F1 tyre strategies are becoming a strange discipline.
On this range of 10-15 laps, the pursuing cars, in the 3 laps after the pitstop, have to show pace to close the gap by half of the remaining laps, or the overtake will not happen.
In this instance, IIRC BEA advantage was about 5-6 seconds with 10 laps remaining. As soon as the gap didnt fell by 1 sec per lap on the immediate laps after HAM, NOR tyre change, at least on my experience on similar cases, the gap tends to stabilize and the ovetakes is not possible as, even with DRS, either cars pursuing are 1sec faster or they need more than one attempt to complete the pass – what it usually doesnt happens with fewer than 3-4 laps.
DaveW (@dmw)
10th March 2024, 15:16
Agree. Soon as I saw Hamilton make no immediate ground not even a tenth I knew it was over.
AlexS
10th March 2024, 19:02
Hamilton could not even pass the slow straight line speed Mclaren.
Unless Bearman had a scare or over-reacted Hamilton had no chance to pass a faster straight line speed Ferrari.
AlexS
10th March 2024, 13:38
The hard tires were too good for this race , there was basically no significant degradation. Leclerc made fastest lap of the race in a 41 lap hard tire beating Ham in the soft tire – albeit Ham was 10 or so laps heavier.
Michael (@freelittlebirds)
10th March 2024, 14:39
Yeah, the hards seemed almost as good as softs without the deg.
RR
10th March 2024, 14:41
Come on Vasseur, move Lewis to reserve driver and put Bearman in that car. Sorted.
DaveW (@dmw)
10th March 2024, 15:14
Hamilton was a smidge quicker I think and possibly could have caught him. But no chance to pass with the Ferrari just able to load the battery in S1 every lap while dropping the Mercedes.
roadrunner (@roadrunner)
10th March 2024, 15:15
Pirelli tires. What do we expect? Medium and softs identical in the first part of the race. Medium and hards identical in the middle part of the race. Softs and hards identical in the last part.
No wonder we don’t see any variety in strategy. And if the teams do something different, they fail.
Michael (@freelittlebirds)
10th March 2024, 15:22
@roadrunner does Pirelli just use different colors for the same tire? It would certainly cut costs to have a single tire with 3 colors…
EffWunFan (@cairnsfella)
11th March 2024, 0:21
Is it not the case though, that there are frequently regular comments maligning tyre degradation, and then comments such as we are seeing here that – at least appear to be – suggesting that the difference in degradation is too small.
I understand that some comments focus upon the ‘similar performance’ of each compound. But this is only true with regard to the use of each compound, and the hard would obviously deliver the same performance for longer, but not have an equivalent peak performance (stating the obvious I know) . Yes, Leclerc set fastest lap on an old hard set, but this was very late in the race, in what is acknowledged to be a very fast car.
Whilst I do not have the near photographic recollection that many on here have such that I can give examples, I am quite certain that performance and degradation variation is quite significant at some venues. One could argue that it adds interest that the ‘variation varies’. It’s the same for all the teams.
I suppose I struggle to see a scenario that would keep a significant majority happy. I’m sure many could put forward an opinion as to the ideal tyre compounds and regs, but I am equally sure those suggestions would have their supporters and detractors.
For what it’s worth (and I know it is not a popular viewpoint) I would like to see the tyre taken out of the performance equation as far as is reasonably possible. It just irks me that the primary highly engineered machine and it’s associated incredible expense can be affected so significantly by some arbitrary regs regarding how it contacts the ground. The rule dictating different compounds means – in most cases – the car is running an artificial handicap at some point in the race. How is this significantly different to Bernie’s sprinklers? This (sadly for me, but not for everyone) would still not achieve flat out racing, as fuel management would still be in play, but should get much closer to it.
roadrunner (@roadrunner)
11th March 2024, 1:57
All fair points and I agree with you that tires should be like referees in football: The less attention they attract the better they are. And I’m also perfectly happy how the (hard and medium) tires behaved in Saudi Arabia as they allowed the drivers to push flat out.
My point (that I expressed in a little exaggerated way) is that any compound, when fitted, offered similar or identical performance to the other and therefore didn’t allow for strategic variety.
That’s not what I want to see and I can’t imagine that’s the intention. For example a (relatively) new soft tire should be significantly faster by default over a 12 lap stint than a 35 laps old hard tire. Or a new hard should either be faster or slower than a ten laps old medium, but again it’s accidentally exactly as fast.
It was even worse last weekend. On an abrasive track Perez fitted softs and Sainz hards. Both sets had the same age and amount of laps to do and surprisingly both drivers did the same lap times throughout the stint. No initial gain for the softs and no advantage later for the hards.
Same applies to Ricciardo and Tsunoda. Ricciardo was really only faster because Tsunoda was in traffic.
Pirelli, without a second tire manufacturer, will not suddenly start to invest a lot of many to build a different/better product so we will have to deal with what we have.
How could this situation be improved? Maybe skip some compounds in the tire allocation? It works in F2 and would certainly allow for greater variety, but at least one compound would probably be completely useless.
Give the teams the freedom of choice which tires to run?
That would be great, but Pirelli is reluctant to allow that as they fear tire issues when the teams go softer and softer.
My favourite would be dropping the mandatory pitstop in the race, but oblige the driver to use only the compound they chose to qualify on.
MichaelN
11th March 2024, 11:24
This is a very tricky problem, especially because of the forced pitstop. Suppose you had an 60 lap race that could be run with 1 set of Hard, 2 sets of Medium, 3 sets of Soft. That’d be much easier to balance, because the Medium would ideally be something like 30 seconds faster (assuming that’s a pitstop), so 0,5 seconds per lap. The Soft would be 60 seconds faster, so 1 second per lap.
The forced stop means the Hard won’t have to last the whole race, and so the gaps between the compounds just get smaller and smaller. Eeking out an extra stop on Soft is barely possible. Add in that they all wear a lot and have a very narrow operating window. So the obvious solution is usually use the softest tyre possible and then just pace the cars. Race lap times are often 4 or more seconds slower than in qualifying, and those are just the absolute fastest laps!
Jere (@jerejj)
10th March 2024, 16:25
“I saw on the screen that they were pitting,”
– Did he really because the screens in Jeddah are located in places that make viewing them effectively impossible at normal racing speeds, i.e., either beside full-throttle sections or corners.
Nevertheless, I also expected him to get passed, but suprisingly, they couldn’t catch him quickly enough to mount a challenge despite quite a considerable tyre advantage.