Bearman’s Monaco weekend sinks with red flag blunder

Oliver Bearman’s Monaco Grand Prix weekend is as good as dead in the Mediterranean water after the Haas rookie was slapped with a 10-place grid penalty for Sunday's race for overtaking under red flag conditions during Friday's second practice session.

The severe safety breach occurred at La Rascasse, where Bearman passed Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz shortly after Oscar Piastri’s crash had triggered the red flags in the late afternoon session.

According to the FIA stewards' report, the warning lights and dashboard signals had clearly indicated the red flag well before Bearman made the move – even though the Haas team radioed the 20-year-old “rather late”, the stewards determined that was not a valid excuse.

The Stewards’ Verdict

“The dashboard also indicated the red flag well before the overtake took place,” stated the FIA’s damning report.

“The regulations require the drivers to ‘immediately’ reduce speed and proceed slowly back to their respective pits. The same regulations caution drivers of the fact that in a red flag situation, ‘overtaking is forbidden’ and that drivers should ‘remember that race and service vehicles may be on the track’.”

“The driver claimed that he saw the red flags but decided not to slow down abruptly because he felt that slowing down abruptly would have been more dangerous and that what he did was a safer way of handling the situation.”

Bearman told the stewards he saw the red flags but chose not to slow abruptly, claiming it would have been more dangerous in that moment. The stewards weren’t convinced.

“We disagreed with his decision to not take steps to slow down sufficiently to avoid overtaking another car and instead proceeding slowly back to the pits, as required,” they added.

• Monaco Grand Prix Free Practice 2 - Results

“The whole purpose of requiring drivers to slow down immediately is for safety – they will not know what is in front of them or the reason for the red flag being shown. This is particularly so in a track like Monaco.

“In the circumstances, there is no mitigating factor for the fact that he overtook a car under a red flag and we therefore imposed a penalty of a 10 grid place drop for the Race and 2 penalty points.”

Positives Amid the Penalty

Despite the setback, Bearman tried to focus on the progress Haas made across the two sessions, where he finished 15th in both FP1 and FP2.

“We did a good step with the car from FP1 to FP2 and I was pretty happy with the balance,” the young Briton told

“We tried to short run the medium and see how its performance was across one lap and it seemed pretty robust.

“We need to see where we stand because I did my performance laps on medium, which was quite different to some of the others. I think there's some good signs from today and let's hope to build on them and improve tomorrow.”

Still, with overtaking notoriously difficult in Monaco, the grid penalty has likely already consigned Bearman’s weekend to the back foot – if not out to sea entirely.

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