100th podium for Verstappen gets overshadowed by spectacular Ferrari debut of Ollie Bearman

Max Verstappen won his 54th race and 100th podium in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, but nobody really cares. Because all the attention went to the man who finished seventh: stand-in driver Ollie Bearman, who managed to win points on his debut in Formula 1.

I don’t think anybody was surprised by the winner of the race. Max Verstappen managed to win his ninth race in a row, further solidifying his position in the championship and making it an absolute inevitability before he seals his fourth title. The fact that he won by “only” eight seconds - though that cranked up to thirteen seconds because of a time penalty - was merely because he was saving the engine towards the end of the race.

Bearman took the spotlight from the very first moment

But the real hero of the day was Ollie Bearman. The young Brit was drafted in just two days earlier to drive the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz, who had to sit out the race due to appendicitis. It was a story worthy of a tv pilot: Bearman, only 18 years old, had just secured his first pole position of the season in Formula 2. And then the call came in: “Forget F2, you’re driving an F1 car this weekend”. It makes him the youngest Ferrari driver in the history of Formula 1. Expectations were tempered, since he only had one practice session to get familiar with the car, and that session was cut short as well because of a crash by Zhou Guanyu. He qualified eleventh, only half a second away from his teammate. 

But then the race came, and my goodness did Bearman deliver. Keeping the car out of the wall and finishing the race would already have been an accomplishment, but he went a little further than that. Every lap, you could see him get more comfortable with the car, learning the ins and outs of a Formula 1 race and establishing himself as a proper contender. He even took a page out of the Book of Carlos Sainz by getting ahead of the Ferrari strategists and asking for strategy updates himself. 

Tsunoda was the first to fall, as Bearman overtook him early in the race and quickly created a gap to the Racing Bulls driver. Next up was Zhou Guanyu, the man who had cut Bearman’s prep time short. Bearman overtook him with relative ease, as if he wanted to prove that the limited practice time wasn’t going to hold him back. By overtaking Zhou, Bearman put himself into a great position to score points on debut, a feat last accomplished by Zhou himself. Next, Bearman saw the car appear that he had gotten his first F1 experience in back in Austin last year: the Haas of Nico Hulkenberg. It took ten laps on a harder compound, but finally Bearman managed to go past the German and take P9.

In the dying laps of the race, Norris and Hamilton made their first and only pitstop. They came back out a good six seconds behind Bearman. While they continued their scrap for position from earlier, they also began closing in on Bearman, who now drove in seventh. As the laps counted down, so did the distance between Norris and Bearman. But in the twilight of the race did the Ferrari driver show his true skills. Instead of panicking, he kept it cool, he stayed calm, and asked his engineers for regular updates, as if he had been doing this stuff for years now. And as the final lap began, Bearman kept his two more experienced countrymen behind on a good two second gap. A gap that stayed the same as they all crossed the finish line. 

Ollie Bearman became the youngest Ferrari driver ever and the first driver in three years to win points on debut.

The rest of the grid gave us hope

But even if you set aside the heroics pulled by Bearman, this race was a lot more interesting than the season opener in Bahrain. Everyone in the top ten was jostling for positions. There were exciting duels between George Russell and Fernando Alonso, between Oscar Piastri and Lewis Hamilton, and for a brief moment even between Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez. We didn’t get any struggles between teammates like we did last week, but that’s more because the Racing Bulls drivers weren’t anywhere near each other. We even got - and I cannot believe I’m saying this - an expert strategy call from Haas, resulting in Hulkenberg getting his and the team’s first point of the season.

If Bahrain was an ominous sign for the rest of the season, then Saudi Arabia was a glimmer of hope that there might still be something worthwhile this year. Yes, Verstappen sealing the title is already a foregone conclusion after two races. And the margins may be less narrow than last year. But at least the rest of the grid will do everything in their power to give us some interesting stories throughout this season.