F1: Despite their continued track success with a win in Saudi Arabia, the internal conflicts within Red Bull continue to rumble on.
Fox SportsOliver Bearman’s outstanding weekend in Saudi Arabia almost certainly secure him a seat on the 2025 grid, but the effects of his performance could — and perhaps should — be much further reaching.
The 18-year-old mastered the step change beautifully. He qualified 11th and was less than 0.1 seconds outside Q3, and he raced to seventh at the flag. The signs couldn’t be clearer that Ferrari is preparing to secure Bearman a full-time drive, likely at Haas, in 2025 — as his performance warrants.PODCAST: While Red Bull Racing are dominating on the track, off the track the team is eating itself, with Max Verstappen the latest high-profile identity to be linked to a potential exit in the fast-moving political drama.If Bearman does get himself onto the grid, it’ll be a welcome change for a sport that’s seen its driver market grow stale.
The latter four can all justify their seats, but there’s also no denying that it’s in part thanks to their presence — along with some others — that the pipeline to F1 has effectively closed. His junior CV is strong. He was runner-up to the F3 crown in 2021 and a race winner in his first F2 campaign the following year.
“It shows that a rookie in Formula 2 last year — coming into his second season, not even having finished his second year in Formula 2 — is ready to be in Formula 1,” he said. “Formula 2 is so close that if a team gets it right with the driver on its day, a team that doesn’t could be three tenths off,” he said. “You could be sitting at the tail end of the top 10 or even outside. That is the difference.
Unfortunately the cameo came too late in the year for him to enter the driver market, which by then had been effectively sewn up. Only Logan Sargeant was waiting for the nod for a second season. It’s partly for that reason drivers like Doohan, having proved their potential, choose not to contend for a third time. There’s nothing to gain but lots to lose.
That said, his results were reasonably strong in all three years. In 2021 he finished fifth in the tight pack chasing runaway champion Piastri, in 2022 he was runner-up to Drugovich and in 2023 he finally took the crown in a final-race showdown.
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