After a largely unseen rollercoaster race at Imola, Ollie Bearman had evidently had one too many questions suggesting it had been a disappointing grand prix.
Bearman’s race was too easily misjudged just by looking at the results sheet, beating only fellow rookie Gabriel Bortoleto and finishing second-to-last of those to make it to the end.
And he disputed a suggestion afterwards that it was always going to be a long and tricky race from 19th on the grid after a deleted qualifying lap, pointing to the problem that prompted him to return to the pits for a second pitstop just as the race seemed to be going his way.
“Everyone thinks I had a s*** race - but actually it was going pretty well,” Bearman contested.
“I just had to pit off my medium after one lap because the wheel wasn't attached.
“I came out of the pits behind [George] Russell; he was P7, I was quicker than [Yuki] Tsunoda and we were on the same strategy and he was in the points.
“So we were on for a good result. Unfortunately there was an issue in the pitstop which meant I had to do another one, and that's not the fastest way.”
Bearman, who is finding his voice in F1 and getting quite combative when he needs to now, was right to take issue with the notion his race was doomed to fail.
Getting into the points was a very tall order, and the first stint he did as much as could reasonably expected - running almost last of those who were sticking it out on hards, but keeping Tsunoda’s Red Bull behind, catching Nico Hulkenberg’s Sauber ahead, and just about fending off the recovering Russell, who had stopped early in his Mercedes, too.
The stroke of luck that Haas was aiming for with that long first stint came in the form of a virtual safety car, ironically for Bearman’s team-mate Esteban Ocon stopping exiting the Tosa hairpin – which gave Bearman a cheap pitstop, and as a bonus triggered early second trips to pits for those that had stopped already.
Though Bearman got jumped in this phase by Russell, he rejoined 13th, with two Aston Martins up ahead on old tyres and a slower Sauber to try to pick off, too. An unlikely point looked on - but only briefly. Because Bearman had to go straight back into the pits to solve the wheel problem and the length of that stop as Haas checked everything meant he emerged a lap down.
So having got to a position to - however unlikely - snipe for a point, only then did the race turn into a futile effort. A late safety car did return him to the lead lap but with so little of the race remaining and being 18th, there was nothing to fight for beyond picking off Bortoleto, then latching onto the back of a midfield DRS train.
“That killed his race,” Haas team boss Ayao Komatsu said of the pitstop.
“But, after the safety car cleared, Ollie’s pace on his last stint was amazing – it was really good.
“Even after the last safety car, his pace was very strong on an old set of hard tires.
“The positive is that the car had pace to score points. It’s another missed opportunity though, that’s the negative. We need to put this right.”
The silver lining for Bearman was that, as Komatsu references, the stint he ran a lap down between the virtual and full safety cars was extremely encouraging. Komatsu’s not exaggerating when he says the pace was really good - it was pretty much a match for race leader Max Verstappen and the two McLarens!
“I came out a lap down but in the mix with the guys who were fighting for the podium and gauging against them I had decent pace and the car felt really, really good,” Bearman said.
“Honestly, that stint, even though I was a lap down and on my own and not fighting for anything, I was still trying to push the limits of my car and feel it, and the car felt really good and predictable.
“So I was happy with that.”
After retiring from the Miami GP with an engine problem, Bearman’s now unfortunately lost some momentum after his early-season point-scoring form.
Having been a top-10 threat in practice at Imola, that pace in the grand prix when in clear air does beg the question of what might have been possible had Bearman started somewhere representative rather than at the back after being denied progressing to Q2 by his controversial deleted Q1 lap.
That situation had deeply annoyed Bearman, and he still clearly disagreed with by Sunday evening in Italy. He didn’t want to comment on it anymore when asked by The Race, only reiterating, “it's really a mess how this was handled”.
“The qualifying was the craziest thing that's happened to me in probably my entire career,” he said.
“So things aren't really going our way. Hopefully, we've used up all our bad luck this weekend.”
