The word is out and it’s official: Ollie Bearman will drive for Haas in 2025. The Briton was announced just before the British Grand Prix. He’ll replace Nico Hulkenberg at the American team, though it’s not yet known who will be his teammate.
The announcement isn’t exactly surprising. Bearman had been on Haas’ radar for quite some time, and it was clear that Ferrari wanted their junior driver on the grid sooner rather than later. With Hulkenberg moving to Sauber next year, it was pretty much guaranteed that the opened up seat would go to Bearman.
This move is great news for everyone involved. It’s good for F1 because it means there is some new blood coming into the sport. There are quite a few drivers of whom you could reasonably ask why they are still in F1, and getting a new driver in is great in keeping things fresh. It’s also good for Haas, as this might help them work through their rookie trauma of 2021. And it’s good for Ferrari. By going to Haas, Bearman gets a chance to develop a little as a driver before making the move to Ferrari itself. And given that their new hire Lewis Hamilton presumably won’t be there for that long, it sets Bearman on the perfect trajectory to replace Hamilton once he retires.
Unlucky results hide an incredibly fast driver
But most of all, this is of course great news for Bearman himself. The young Briton is having an absolutely horrendous season in Formula 2, which led some people to say that he shouldn’t deserve the step up to F1. To those people I say: please look beyond the scoresheet. His season has been marked by troubles well outside of his control. He was set to start from pole position in Saudi Arabia, but obviously withdrew from that race to replace Sainz in F1. His engine noped out on him during the race in Imola when he was on course for the win. A bad strategy kept him well out of contention in Spain. And in Austria, while he was charging through the field towards a podium, his engine broke down again and forced him to retire. Combine that with the fact that his team Prema for the first time in forever is suddenly not capable of bringing a good car, and you start to understand why Bearman only sits in 14th at the moment.
No, to get a real measure of Bearman’s pace, you have to look at 2023. The Ferrari junior came off the back of two strong seasons: he won the title in both the German and Italian F4 competitions in 2021 and fell just 7 points short of the Formula 3 title in his rookie year in 2022. In only his second raceweekend in F2, Bearman was challenging the much more experienced Theo Pourchaire for the win. He got crashed into by other drivers during two of the first three rounds, but by the fourth raceweekend he really proved himself.
| 2021 | German F4 | 1st |
| 2021 | Italian F4 | 1st |
| 2022 | Formula 3 | 3rd (six points off 1st place) |
| 2023 | Formula 2 | 6th (four race wins to his name) |
Starting from ninth in the sprintrace in Baku, he kept his head cool while the rest didn’t and managed to claim his first win in F2. Then he started from pole the next day for the feature race and held off charges from Pourchaire to stay in the lead and win both races in the same weekend. Do you know how rare that is? It only happened three times since 2017 that somebody managed to win all F2 races in one weekend.
On F1's radar
Ultimately, Bearman would claim three pole positions and four race wins over the course of his rookie F2 season. He finished the season in sixth, which could have been higher had it not been for a late charge in the standings by Alpine Junior Drivers Jack Doohan and Victor Martins. Nevertheless, it was more than enough to put Bearman in the spotlight, and clearly the F1 people thought so too. Haas gave him a free practice at the 2023 Mexico Grand Prix, where his fastest time was only 0.3 seconds slower than teammate Nico Hulkenberg. Haas immediately gave him another test at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and claimed him for a staggering six practice sessions in 2024.
And then of course came his incredible debut at Jeddah, where he finished ahead of Lewis Hamilton and Lando Norris, a result that’s still good enough to keep him in 14th place in this year’s F1 standings despite having only driven one race.
Congratulations Ollie Bearman, I’m sure we’ll see a lot more impressive races from you.