Ollie Bearman says he’s going to be aiming to get on top of his tyre management quickly in his debut season in F2, with him also fielding a question over any potential opportunity in a Ferrari F1 car.
The young Briton has stormed through the junior formula and finds himself in F2 for the first time this campaign, having made the jump up from F3 for this year.
He’s with the Prema outfit once again, who have ties to Ferrari, and as part of the Scuderia’s driver programme there’s natural interest in whether he could be one of the next graduates from a driver academy to the F1 grid.
Of course, it’s very early days in Bearman’s career – he won’t turn 18 until May – and so it’s probably unlikely we’ll see him in F1 for at least a few years yet.
His progress has been impressive to this point, though, and he’ll be aiming to build on his debut weekend in F2 in Bahrain earlier this month with a solid performance at the high-speed Jeddah Corniche street circuit in Saudi Arabia this weekend.
It’s a very different test to the one Bahrain provided at the opening round of the championship, with the abrasive surface the Sakhir circuit possesses posing a sizeable challenge when it comes to tyre management.
Indeed, degradation is high in Bahrain and Bearman admitted that, whilst other tracks this year shouldn’t cause as much of an issue as there was a couple of weeks ago, he will be aiming to get on top of tyre management as the F2 campaign progresses:
“I was struggling for pace for the majority of the race but I tried my best to keep my position and also my first laps were quite good,” Bearman said to GIVEMESPORT as he reflected on his F2 debut.
“It was my tyre management I struggled with, Bahrain’s degradation is one of the highest so it punishes mistakes a lot more. I need to be careful to avoid those mistakes that cause degradation a bit more.”
During the media call earlier this week, Bearman was also asked about potentially getting a Ferrari F1 testing opportunity in the future, but said that it was a little too early to be thinking about that:
“I haven’t discussed anything about F1. I’m just starting out in F2 so it’s a bit of a way away yet. The best thing I can do is focus on my F2 campaign so the answer is no.”
