Oliver Bearman made his Formula 1 debut in Jeddah earlier this year, during a last-minute stint with Ferrari. A call from FP3 that changed his weekend and his career, as he remembers.
“Well before FP1, I went there to catch up with the guys and see how things were going” Bearman said on the Beyond the Grid podcast. “But after he drove in FP1 and FP2, and I took pole in F2, I thought it would be a normal weekend.”
“And even the next day, which was Friday morning, I was preparing to start tenth in the Sprint race, because the grid is reversed. I was having lunch when I was called. the second my name was called, I knew what was going to be said.”
The future Haas F1 driver says he almost missed this exceptional opportunity because his manager no longer had credit for certain phone calls: “First, he called my manager, but my manager had no credit on his phone or something. So I almost missed the race because my manager hadn’t recharged his minutes! “
“But I called Fred back, because I had enough data, thank God, and he told me the news. He told me that I was racing for Ferrari that weekend. I think he He quickly realized that I was very nervous by the way I spoke to him. He said to me, ‘Ollie, calm down.’
“I remember saying to him, ‘I’ll be at the track in 10 minutes, Fred!’ And my hotel was half an hour from the track but I didn’t want to miss it, I wanted to go there and make sure I could do it. So, yeah, the three hours between the call and. jumping in the car for FP3 went like that.”
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