Oliver Bearman sets sights on Max Verstappen race ahead of F1 rookie season

Haas rookie driver Oliver Bearman has set his sights on racing against reigning champion Max Verstappen ahead of the Australian Grand Prix. 

In a light-hearted moment while speaking to the media, including Motorsport.com, in Melbourne, the British driver was asked which experienced driver he was most looking forward to racing alongside this season. He responded:

“Max. Then I would be doing pretty well! No, of course, a lot of drivers with great experience. A few of them that I grew up watching, they would probably be the guys that I want to race against the most because they’ve always been part of my life in a way. I was watching Fernando [Alonso] and Lewis [Hamilton] all the way through my childhood and now to share the track with them is a very special feeling.

“I got to race Lewis pretty much every race I did last year for some reason. We always ended up together, so I’ve had enough of racing Lewis, but if I can get near to him this year, then it means the car’s pretty quick, so that would be a good sign.”

The 19-year-old stepped into the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz and the Haas of Kevin Magnussen last year in his reserve driver role, so he has already been able to tuck some strong race experience under his belt. However, he is keen to continue his learning of the VF25 in the first practice session in Melbourne.

After pre-season testing in Bahrain from 26-28 February, Bearman is looking forward to learning how the car behaves on lower fuel after not being able to do those runs previously. He 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. 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.”