“Ciao.”
As Ollie Bearman dove down the inside of Liam Lawson at Turn 14 during the Chinese Grand Prix, the Haas driver said the informal Italian word that doubles as hello and goodbye, later repeating the switchback for a second time when he overtook an Alpine in a similar fashion.
It seemed like a harmless exchange, a bit of celebration considering the rookie’s lackluster performance in Australia and how difficult it is to overtake in Formula One (particularly when you’re struggling in top speed at times, like Haas).
But he soon faced questions about it after the race in Shanghai, and expressed a bit of regret.
“No, it was literally in the moment and I feel really bad now because I wasn’t being disrespectful,” Bearman explained to reporters, “but I was just happy and wanting to share with the team. I won’t do it again.”
That’s the thing about the 19-year-old Brit. Bearman doesn’t hide his joy, whether it’s to do with an overtake during a race or when chatting about moving into his new apartment in Monaco and building different pieces of furniture. There’s a novelty about him, and despite his rapid rise through the Ferrari ranks, Bearman is staying authentically himself.
“I dedicated myself to racing for the vast majority of my life and all of my actions really revolve around that,” Bearman told The Athletic. “But also now, the closer I get to F1, the more you realize that it can become all-consuming and too much. Sometimes you need to separate your work and F1 and sport life versus your own life.”
Bearman’s love for motorsports is no surprise.
He was able to “name every car on the road, pretty much” at five or six years old, and his father, uncle and grandfather have all competed at different motorsport levels. F1 races were on TV at weekends and Bearman remembers watching the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button and Sebastian Vettel racing. He took his first steps into motorsports when he began karting at age six and entered a club race at eight in 2013.
“I always said I wanted to become an F1 driver, but everyone says that when they’re karting,” Bearman says. “It’s the dream for everyone. It didn’t really become a possibility until I got into F4. That was the first step on the single-seater ladder.”
Bearman’s talent was evident early on, finishing in the top five for the British Karting GP in 2014, and he made his single-seater debut in 2020. The following year, he became the first driver to win the German and Italian F4 championships.
And that’s when Bearman’s life changed — “Ferrari spotted me.”
The call came while the young Englishman was self-isolating for two weeks with Covid-19. Stuck indoors during the height of summer, his father gave him the news through the window: “My dad told me they were interested and that I would be going to Italy to be tested by Ferrari.”
Bearman’s No 87 Haas in the Chinese Grand Prix last weekend (Sipa USA)
Bearman vividly recalls that day at Maranello — the day of his first test. He remembers passing through the doors for the first time, feeling nervous while in the building, speaking with the bosses and driving onto the team’s legendary Fiorano Circuit: “It was a very nerve-racking but also proud moment. Even if it was just a Formula Four car, it was driving out of that iconic garage in Fiorano where I’ve seen people like Michael Schumacher, Vettel, Hamilton now, driving out of, and it was a very proud moment for myself.”
Having impressed the team, Bearman moved to Italy at age 16, in 2021, to join the Ferrari Driver Academy. While he feels he “overall upgraded by moving to Italy”, the London-born teenager initially had a tough adjustment. He didn’t know anyone, but he settled into Italian life, immersing himself in the language and eating out.
One aspect of Italian culture he couldn’t quite get into was the coffee scene. Bearman isn’t a big coffee drinker — he orders “a cappuccino but with as much milk as I can, so it doesn’t really taste like coffee” from one specific store. He is a matcha fan, though. But in the end, he felt “at home in my last few months there,” before he moved to Monaco, where many F1 drivers reside.
Joining a Formula One academy program, as Bearman did with Ferrari, “there is a route to F1 if you perform. So I knew from there if I played my cards right and drove fast enough, that I would have an opportunity to get to F1.
“Before that, it was a dream without any kind of backing, any possibility. But once Ferrari came along and I was performing well, that was when I realized I can make a career out of this.”
Sitting inside Made in New York Pizza in Manhattan earlier this year, sporting a Haas top, Bearman spilled the details about his thrilling offseason project: putting together furniture for his Monaco apartment. He’s built a bed, a table and a library (though he’s not a big reader, so he’ll need to fill it). He’s bought pots and pans too, stocking his new kitchen.
A lot has changed since he joined the Ferrari Driver Academy three years ago.
Bearman finished third in the 2022 Formula Three championship and sixth while competing in Formula Two the following year (and making his FP1 debut with Haas). Before driving during first practice in Mexico City in 2023, Bearman remembered “feeling a lot of pressure and struggling to sleep the night before.”
Self-confidence hasn’t been a big issue for Bearman, though there have been moments he has struggled with it. He said, “Confidence is always a tough thing. You have the media who watch your every move. By (coming) in this world, you also lose a bit of privacy in your entire life. It’s one of the facts of the sport.”
Hopping into the F1 car for his first free practice session last year is one example. The Mexico City GP weekend is one of the common weekends where teams will fulfil their young driver practice session requirements, thrusting them into the spotlight.
Bearman, 19, is competing full-time against F1 veterans now (Mark Thompson/Getty Images)
“It’s impossible not to ask yourself questions — Am I good enough? Do I deserve to be here?” Bearman says. “You do get a bit of impostor syndrome because you’re sitting next to a seven-time world champion (Hamilton) and people who’ve been in this sport since I was born. It’s natural, but I think straight away I performed pretty well here, and then you answer those questions in the back of your mind.”
While he returned to F2 in 2024, the Briton did advance in his career by becoming a reserve driver for Haas and Ferrari. But he didn’t expect to land in a driver’s seat for a grand prix as quickly as he did. On March 8 last year, news broke that Carlos Sainz was out of the Saudi Arabian GP, sidelined with appendicitis, and required surgery. Bearman was tapped to make his debut.
Bearman only had one practice session that Jeddah weekend to get up to speed, setting the 10th fastest time. Come qualifying, he narrowly missed out and lined up P11 for the grand prix, and scored points with a sixth-place finish in the iconic red car. Bearman says, “By the end of the race, I was really strong in terms of my pace and my confidence. After that, I had no doubts as to whether I belonged in F1.”
Heading into the 2024 season, Bearman had his eyes on securing an F1 drive for 2025, and that Saudi Arabian GP weekend “accelerated those plans.” The news broke during the British Grand Prix weekend, in July, that he’d joined Haas, but he says, “We only really finalized it two days beforehand.” He had to be careful who he told the news to before it was announced because “my grandad loves talking on social media.”
“I think they found out five minutes before the world found out I was in F1. It was, of course, a very proud moment because you think back to all of the sacrifice and hard work that I’ve done to get in this position. It’s since I was six years old that I’ve been aiming to have a spot in this sport, professionally.”
The Briton’s supersub story didn’t end there, as he replaced Kevin Magnussen twice (when the Dane received a race ban for Azerbaijan and also when he was ill in Brazil). Bearman ended the season with seven points, good enough for 18th in the final drivers’ standings.
“My big takeaway from last year is, of course, that sometimes you get lucky, and I was certainly very lucky last year to get the opportunities I did. But through the hard work that I did in the background, I was able to make the most of these opportunities and prove that I was deserving of them,” Bearman says. “Because it’s very easy to say that I was lucky to get these opportunities, and I fully agree with that, but I could quite easily have squandered them and not made the most of them and not shown that I deserved a full-time seat in Formula One.”
Before Bearman hopped into Haas’ VF-25, his first full-time F1 seat, he learned the power and how valuable it is to spend time away from the sport.
Formula One is all-consuming, with 24 grands prix and six sprint races across 21 countries worldwide from March until December. Even during the weeks between racing, it’s not a complete pause. Bearman says that, early in the week, “you’re still thinking about what you could have done better in the previous race, and then you’re already thinking towards the next race.” And then there’s the case of visiting the factory and simulator time — or in Haas’ case, going to Maranello for the sim.
“It’s really tough to fully switch off, but I try to. A big way I find to switch off from racing, which sounds a bit strange, is by training,” Bearman says. “In a way, it’s making me better in the car because it’s making me more fit and more ready to race. But at the same time, I find I’m in my own world. I’m by myself, and sometimes, it’s really nice to do that. You spend weekends talking to so many people and being surrounded by so many people. Sometimes it’s really nice to be by yourself and with yourself, with your own mind.”
Cycling is a hobby he’s recently picked up, and while he’s not a fan of track walks, he’ll sometimes run them — after all, he knows “exactly where the finish line is.” He has picked up other hobbies over time, such as photography, because he feels “the worst thing for me is when I’m not busy, when I’m not occupied and doing something, I tend to go crazy.”
That can make reserve-driver weekends challenging, but in a lighthearted way. Outside of being in the meetings and learning what you can, it’s much quieter than when you’re in the driver’s seat. Bearman took matters into his own hands during the 2024 Singapore GP weekend and approached Ferrari. “I said I was thinking of stuff to do, and I saw the camera, and I was like, ‘That’s my job for the weekend’.”
Taking photos throughout that weekend was his first time picking up a proper camera. He opted for doing black-and-white photos, which he described as easier than working in color. He took over Ferrari’s X account during a session as well, writing the posts himself and receiving confirmation from the team before it was posted.
“I’m trying to kind of experience the weekend from every different angle,” he says. “I’ve done the driving side of things. I would still definitely take the driving side of everything else, but it’s nice to try some different perspectives.”
Being a reserve driver helped Bearman appreciate the different jobs and aspects that make the teams and this sport run — and ultimately played a role in preparing him for this moment. Before the new season started, he told The Athletic that he viewed it as “24 opportunities to improve myself, my performances in the car, my mindset, my physicality, everything.”
Australia was a rough outing after limited practice time due to crashes, but it was a learning moment. China saw him bounce back and extract the maximum during the race with a 10th-place finish after car changes were made post-sprint. Some of the remaining 22 tracks he’ll be familiar with, or likely encounter new situations. He’ll take each step as it comes and one of his priorities remains unchanged — relish this moment.
“My goal for 2025 is, step one, to really enjoy it because I think that’s really easy to forget,” Bearman said in February. “The reason I’m here is because it’s my biggest passion in the world. I wake up feeling really lucky every day to say that this is my job. I mean, how many people get to do a job they truly love?”
(Top photo: Kym Illman/Getty Images)