Oliver Bearman admitted he felt scared when he overtook Max Verstappen during the Mexican Grand Prix on his way to a best-ever fourth place finish.
The Haas rookie driver pounced on the reigning world champion as Verstappen diced with Lewis Hamilton on lap six. Verstappen and Hamilton went off at turn four, then Verstappen forced George Russell off at the exit of turn five.
Bearman passed the Mercedes, then lined Verstappen up for a pass on the inside of turn six. “I could see it all unfolding in front of me and I was like, okay, play it safe,” he told the official Formula 1 channel.
“I was on the inside and honestly I can’t say what I was feeling on the air, but I was feeling a bit scared. And then I was side by side and I was, like, super-scared.”
However Bearman knew he was far enough alongside the Red Bull to pull off the pass. “When I was side-by-side, I had my nose [ahead] I had so I was not going to give it up.”
Having picked up two places in one lap, Bearman was pleased to see Verstappen drop more than a second behind him soon afterwards.
“When I was leading that pack, obviously I was scared that they would just have more pace than me, but actually I was able to hold them off and even build up a bit of a gap and a bit of a buffer,” he said. “So I’m really, really happy with that and so proud of the team.”
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Haas introduced an upgrade to its car at the previous round in Austin. Bearman said the car’s pace was encouragingly strong.
“I was managing and still able to hold a gap to the cars behind. I [kept] pretty much a consistent gap to Lewis [Hamilton] in front as well, so we were in a good place in terms of pace.”
“In that second stint I had the Mercs behind but again they weren’t close enough to get in my DRS so they didn’t really have more pace than me,” he added. “Even in that first stint, I had George [Russell] pushing like crazy behind me but I think he degged off a bit after.”
Bearman praised his team for performing one of the quickest pit stops of the race when he came in for the second time on lap 48. “It was amazing,” he said. “The guys know when to show up and today was the time to show up.”
He spent the final part of the race under attack from Oscar Piastri. “I feel like the McLarens don’t [suffer from] dirty air, they were just following me like they’re in clean air,” he said. “So he was putting me under a lot of pressure, and of course I was lucky to hold on, but really happy with that.”
A Virtual Safety Car period over the penultimate and final laps gave Bearman some protection from Piastri. But he believes “I would have held him off anyway.”
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“The VSC is always another thing, you have to get the restart right, you can get caught out by a VSC,” he explained. “So when it came out, I wasn’t actually happy, I was sad because I had a lot of battery to use and I was about to deploy it all because it was basically a lap and a half to go. Then the VSC came out. So I was almost a bit sad but happy to finish fourth.”
Although Bearman’s second pit stop meant he dropped from third place to fourth behind Verstappen, he nonetheless equalled Haas’s best ever result in a grand prix.
“At one stage it was looking like P3 and I was counting down the laps in that second stint. But P4 at the end, I’m so happy.
“We’ve been working really hard, we brought an upgrade on the car and to validate the hard work of the team with a P4 and a P9, both cars in the points, it’s a really special feeling.”
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