18-year-old becomes youngest British F1 driver in history

Oliver Bearman’s Formula 1 debut is coming in unexpected circumstances, after Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz’s appendicitis diagnosis.

But it has merely accelerated what was already an inevitability – the British driver has looked headed for F1 for some time.

The 18-year-old from Chelmsford will be the youngest British driver to start an F1 race and third youngest debutant behind Max Verstappen (17) and Lance Stroll (18).

However, Bearman is being thrown in at the deep end at this weekend’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, and it is unwise to expect too much.

His team-mate is Charles Leclerc, who many feel is the fastest man in F1 over one lap.

But Bearman has already proved himself to be an accomplished performer in an F1 car.

A member of the Ferrari driver academy since 2021, he drove in two practice sessions for the Haas team last year, and impressed greatly in both.

Bearman was immediately competitive, but what impressed onlookers just as much was the smooth and mature progress he made.

Haas trackside engineering director Ayao Komatsu – who has been promoted to team principal over the winter – said he “really could not fault” Bearman in his weekend debut in Mexico in October.

That appearance made him the youngest British driver to participate in a grand prix weekend. Now, he has prevented new Ferrari signing Lewis Hamilton, who joins the team in 2025, from becoming the first driver from the United Kingdom to race for Ferrari in F1 since Eddie Irvine in 1999.

At any one time, there are a number of drivers all trying to make it into F1, but very few have a sense of inevitability about them. Bearman, though, is one.

His track record had already marked him out as a potentially special one.

He made his Formula 2 debut last year, and in dominating the weekend at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix became the first driver in the history of the category to top every practice session and win the feature race.

He started karting when he was eight years old, made his single-seater debut in 2020, won both the Italian and German Formula 4 titles in 2021, finished third in his debut season in Formula 3 in 2022 and sixth in F2 last year, when brilliant weekends were punctuated by difficult ones, as is often the case for a rookie.

This year, he started his second season in the F2 championship as one of the favourites. His battle with his team-mate at the Prema team, Mercedes junior Andrea Kim Antonelli – who has been dubbed the “next Verstappen” – was highly anticipated.

Sainz’s illness has put that fight on hold for now, although there will be plenty of time for it to resume.

For now, Bearman has the chance to make an impression in the toughest field of all.

As a Ferrari driver, alongside one of the best drivers in the world, on one of the fastest and most demanding tracks on the calendar.

Speaking last year, he was under no illusions about the demands of F1. “Once you join F1, you’re going up against guys with a lot of races under their belts, and coming in as a rookie is a difficult job,” he said.

“It’s something we’ve thought about and it will be really important that before I start an F1 campaign, I need to be really prepared.”

He has spent plenty of time in the Ferrari simulator, but a race weekend having missed the first practice day is a whole other matter.

This weekend will not break his career – expectations will be low, as everyone realises the size of the task facing Bearman. But it could certainly make it.