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# What it's like watching an F1 crash unfolding in front of you
- URL: https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/what-it-is-like-watching-f1-crash-unfold-ollie-bearman-haas/
- Published: 2026-09-12T13:43:01.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-12T13:59:42.000Z
- Description: The Race was at the scene of the accident as Ollie Bearman crashed his Haas F1 car in Spanish GP FP3. Here's what Jon Noble made of it
- Author: Jon Noble
- Tags: Formula 1, #spanish-grand-prix, #haas, #oliver-bearman, #secondary_feature_1

It's the crunch that stands out. 

That loud, violent, smack of carbonfibre and metal making violent contact with an immovable solid surface is what sticks in your mind when a Formula 1 car crashes into the barriers right in front of you.

It is what stands out recalling those moments at the end of the Spanish Grand Prix's FP3 when Ollie Bearman got it all wrong at the Madring's Turn 10 and ended up smashing into the barriers centimetres in front of me.

It is what I remember from the other time it happened to me, at the Monaco swimming pool back in 2001, when Ralf Schumacher shunted right at the end of opening practice on Thursday.

There is something strange in how your brain processes those moments when the car you are watching is suddenly not doing what you expect it to, and is well off line and travelling in the wrong direction.

You see it is going to go all wrong. You see the tyre smoke. You prepare yourself for the impact. Then the contact happens.

And then, what must be milliseconds later but seems an eternity: that crunch as the sound catches up with the light. It is that which rams home that this is a big one.

After that, the violence dies down, the strewn debris all rolls to a stop, and there is almost a calmness before the marshals get to action.

For a driver, these moments must be even harder to process and the emotions more extreme - as afterwards they appear to go through the classic five stages of grief.

Observing Bearman, as he sits in the Haas making clear to marshals he is OK, you can sense from the way he holds his head and hands the denial and then anger he has about having binned it right at the end of the final practice session.

As he climbs out through a hole in the barriers, there is the depression and then the acceptance of what has happened, as a moped arrives to whisk him away. But he stands there instead, staring into the distance, desperate to watch a crash replay on the big screen behind us.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/dd/af/ddafbd99-2ccd-468c-b622-4b3cccf80b49/content/images/2026/09/IMG_9689-1.jpg)

Then, as the adrenaline winds down, Bearman - since ruled out of qualifying - is beckoned to the medical car. He climbs in the back, looking at the badly damaged Haas still wedged up against the wall. There is the acceptance that it is unlikely that this will not hamper the rest of his weekend.

As Bearman is driven away, the marshals move into action, lifting the car onto a truck and throwing chunks of wrecked carbonfibre through the gaps in the fence.

Drivers had talked before the weekend about the Madring being a punishing venue, and Bearman himself said that the plenty of crashes he had in the sim meant hopefully he had got them out of his system.

"Like that, you learn exactly where the limits are and you find them in the most efficient way possible," he said. "By doing that, you don't do that on the real track, hopefully…"

Unfortunately, real life bites sometimes. And it can be very noisy.