Oliver Bearman has crashed out of the first free practice session ahead of the Australian Grand Prix.
Thankfully, the British driver was cleared by the medical staff at the track, but the VF-25 has suffered extensive damage.
With just over twenty minutes remaining of the session, the Haas driver took to much kerb and ran wide at Turns 9 and 10, running his car onto the gravel causing it to oversteer on its return to the track and ultimately crash into the wall.
At the time of the incident he was sat in P18.
Speaking ahead of the session, Bearman had explained:
“I’m excited to see how the car behaves on lower fuel because due to a few issues and problems, I wasn’t actually able to do that yet,” he said ahead of FP1. “So, that will be an interesting experience and nice because to leave the test without any low fuel lapse was quite a difficult pill to swallow.
“Going onto a new track, it’s quite a different track to Bahrain and seeing how the car jumps onto this track and performance will be important. I think it will tell us a lot about how the season will be if we can get out there straight away in P1 and have a good balance and a good feeling like I did in Bahrain, then I think it’s a sign that the car is going to perform pretty well across different types of tracks.
“The weather is going to be pretty hot over this weekend, which it wasn’t in Bahrain, so I’m just hoping that I’m happy with the balance from the get-go and just get straight onto the fine-tuning of things.”
Oliver Bearman, Haas F1 Team
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
The Haas VF-25 has suffered damage to both the front and rear. The American team will have a tight turn around to get the car ready for FP2. Following on from the three days of pre-season testing in Bahrain, this is the first time that Bearman has driven the car with lower fuel levels and on soft tyres, both of which could have contributed to the incident.
