Bearman reveals brutal toll of Ferrari debut

Oliver Bearman said Formula 2 did not prepare him for the physical demands of Formula 1, revealing that his surprise Ferrari debut at the 2024 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix quickly became a fight to manage severe neck strain on the way to seventh place.

Bearman was drafted in at short notice to replace Carlos Sainz after the Ferrari driver underwent emergency appendix surgery, and still came within 0.036 seconds of reaching Q3 before qualifying 11th in Jeddah. His one-off appearance also made him the youngest driver ever to race for Ferrari.

Speaking in a Formula 1 video, Bearman said the jump from F2 pace to F1 load was immediate. "My first lap in FP3, it was like 12 seconds faster than my pole lap I did in F2 the day before," he said. "On my first run, my neck was gone already. So, I was not really looking forward to that race. And it hurt."

That physical shock, rather than the occasion itself, became the defining part of his debut. After Esteban Ocon said nothing prepares a driver for the strain an F1 car puts on the neck, Bearman agreed and explained just how big the step felt from the junior category.

"Exactly. Because F2, for me, was easy physically," Bearman said. "The neck was not even a factor. Then I did an F1 race, and my neck was everything. It was a crazy step. But a fun day, fun night."

Even with that limitation, Bearman still had to handle the pressure of a Ferrari call-up and the demands of a Grand Prix run at Jeddah. In the closing stages he held off both Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton, turning a late emergency substitution into a points finish that underlined both the scale of the challenge and how quickly he adapted to it.