Veteran F1 Ferrari engineer Jock Clear didn’t hold back his praise for Scuderia rookie Ollie Bearman following the Briton’s remarkable Grand Prix debut last weekend in Saudi Arabia, and predicted the young gun to get “better and better”.
Bearman, Ferrari’s official reserve driver, was drafted in by the Italian outfit on the second day of running in Jeddah after Carlos Sainz was diagnosed with appendicitis.
After a 60-minute practice session to get acquainted with Ferrari’s SF-24, Bearman qualified a strong P11, just missing out on a spot in the Q3 shootout.
But his efforts on race day carried him to a remarkable seventh place finish ahead of front-runners Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton.
Clear, a seasoned F1 engineer who heads up the Ferrari Driver Academy, said that Bearman’s performance on his debut had exceeded all expectations.
“I couldn't have hoped for a better weekend for Ollie,” he said, speaking on the F1 Nation podcast.
“If you'd written the script, you would have balked a bit at the final result because if you brought him to a Grand Prix and said two weeks ago, ‘you're going to do the Grand Prix in Saudi’, mentally he gets prepared for it.
“We can do some things, we can practice some starts, but when you drop him in on Friday morning, one free practice session and then you're into qualifying against the big boys, that's ominous. That's very, very intimidating for anybody.
“I think, from our point of view, we're just very proud of how well he's integrated with the team, how well the team have supported him. There's so much information available. There's so much work to do in an F1 car. We've kept it simple.
“Matteo, the chief engineer, was, from the first get go, ‘just keep it simple for Ollie. There's lots of information available, but let's not overload him. Let's just let him get up to speed’. What you see is what we knew he was capable of but, boy, I didn't expect that under these circumstances.”
©Ferrari
For Bearman, while the process of making his F1 debut was in itself a daunting task, undertaking a baptism of fire on the high-speed streets of Jeddah – a track that takes no prisoners – was equally intimidating according to Clear.
“He's done very well here in his F2 career,” said the Briton. “He was on the front row last year and he put it on pole in F2 on Thursday here, so it's obviously a circuit he's comfortable with.
“But that's a whole different matter when you’ve got to qualify a car that you don't know very well because, let's be straight, he's driven a couple of tests with us, he's done some running in Fiorano, but all with old cars.
“He hasn't driven this car. This is the first time he's driven this car. To go out there and qualify in Saudi, where those walls are quite tight and a lot of the seasoned F1 drivers are saying, ‘this track is scary’, and those walls are quite close to you, that's intimidating in itself.
“The pressure on him in Q2 – you've locked up on your first set, you've now got a second set to try and get through to Q3 – that's when it shows that this is a different level and that was the point where it got a bit messy. But he did a great job to put it P11 anyway. That was beyond our expectations.”
FDA chief Jock Clear with Ollie Bearman in Baku last year.
Regarding Bearman’s race on Saturday evening, Clear highlighted the 18-year-old’s “intelligent” execution.
“I’ve often said about Oliver, he will get better and better the closer he gets to F1, because F1 recognises real intelligence,” said Clear. “Drivers that can think their way around situations really, really shine in F1.
“Ollie is super sharp, super clever, and I think that's what he's demonstrated this week.
“We know he's quick. We've seen him in our car. We know that he can drive a car fast. But the way he's approached the weekend, the way he approached the race, step by step – you've got to get off the grid and you've got to get alongside some fairly feisty opposition who are going to get their elbows out. He did that cleanly.
"We said if he comes around the first lap with all four wheels still on, we'll be really happy. He did that. He was still in P11, so he held his position off the grid, and from then on he just grew into the race.
“You have to recognise every lap of the race was another 10% experience for Ollie in this car, so by the time he'd done half the race, he’d doubled his experience in this car. He was learning super fast, but he never overstretched himself. I think that's the thing I'm most proud of from him.
"It's very easy, especially when Charles [Leclerc] is a bit ahead of you and you know this car will go quicker, there's a bit more potential just to overstretch yourself and make a mistake.
“In those last 10 laps with Lando [Norris] and Lewis [Hamilton] bearing down on you with a new set of soft tyres, you think this is where he's just going to lock up into Turn 1 and it's all going to get messy – but he didn't.
“He kept the rhythm. He kept going and actually got quicker and quicker towards the end of the race. I think his best lap was on the penultimate lap, so just a really intelligent drive and that’s what I'm really proud of, because that has always been his strength and that's going to get better and better.
“That's going to pay off more and more as he gets to F1 and he starts to settle into what is an intelligent driver sport.”
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A standout moment in Clear’s F1 career was when he engineered Jacques Villeneuve’s F1 debut with Williams in 1996, but the Ferrari Driver Academy head admits that Bearm’s astounding display surpassed the Canadian’s initiation.
“I suppose you would all say that I'm a bit biased, and Jacques [Villeneuve] had won an IndyCar championship when he got in an F1 car, but obviously he put it on pole in Melbourne and he would have won that race if Adrian [Newey] hadn't told us to move over and let Damon [Hill] win, in 1996, but obviously Jacques was 26 years old at that time,” he said.
“This guy is 18 so, at this level, having come out of an F2 car at 18 years old, I've never seen anything better than that.”
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