Oliver Bearman made a name for himself last year as the grid’s ‘super-sub’, with a trio of largely impressive one-off performances for Ferrari and Haas. However, his start to life as a full-time driver has been patchy.

His first weekend in Australia may have got off to an alarming start, with a crash and spin leading to little practice time, but he brought his car home in the tricky rain-hit race. After that he reeled off a trio of points finishes.

A long opening stint in Shanghai delievered 10th place, then penalties for other drivers moved him up two more spots. He reached Q3 on his first appearance at Suzuka and took another point there, then raced from last to pick up another point in Bahrain, holding off Andrea Kimi Antonelli.

As Haas found themselves increasingly under pressure in the midfield, Bearman endured a long point-less run. He would have broken it in Miami, where a well-judged pit stop on a drying track put him in the points, but he was penalised for his team’s error in the pits. He was particularly unlucky with a red flag call which cost him a place in Q2 at Imola and condemned him to an afternoon stuck in traffic.

Oliver Bearman

Best Worst
GP start 10 20 (x3)
GP finish 8 17 (x2)
Points 8

However, Bearman could only blame himself for two other costly incidents with red flags. Passing a rival under red flags in Monaco was bad enough, but his crash under the same conditions at Silverstone was a serious error and made him the first F1 driver ever to collect four penalty points for one incident.

Perhaps a touch of frustration was creeping in as he finished 11th for three consecutive races, two of them behind his team mate, Esteban Ocon. He collided with Ocon in the other, though in Bearman’s defence he had been running ahead until he was hit by Yuki Tsunoda.

He finally ended his points drought with seventh place in the Spa sprint race, two spots behind Ocon. Bearman has shown the potential to rival his more experienced team mate, and has pulled off some particularly impressive qualifying performances, but he still looks a bit rough around the edges and will have to tread carefully to avoid triggering a race ban having accumulated eight penalty points much too quickly.

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