How Oliver Bearman transformed his F1 rookie campaign

Oliver Bearman has pinpointed changes to his race weekend approach as the reason for his vast improvements during the 2025 Formula 1 season.

The Haas driver finished 13th in his rookie campaign, two spots above grand prix winning team-mate Esteban Ocon, thanks to better results after the summer break. 

Six of his nine points finishes came from August's Dutch Grand Prix onwards, a run which included fourth in Mexico having raced inside the podium positions for much of the contest. 

It marked a stark contrast from earlier on when he went nine grands prix without a point, and although a floor upgrade in Austin helped change the situation, Bearman thinks it was due to much more than that.

“Since the summer break, I tried to add a bit more structure to my weekends, how I go about the weekends,” said the 20-year-old.

“Often, I was spending a lot of time. It's also as a result of the car being quicker. Before the summer break, when we know that we're like this to even be out of Q1, I spent the whole time focussing on how can I improve my driving, how can I improve the car set-up to find that half a tenth. Spending really no time thinking about where my head is at prior to getting in the car and setting goals for each session.

"Now, just making sure that half an hour before the session, I stop working on the set-up and the driving and all of those things and focus on my mental side. I found that to be quite useful.”

Oliver Bearman, Haas F1 Team

Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images

But those learnings are simply part of being an F1 rookie because a driver needs to go through rough periods in order to become a better racer. 

“In the first half of the season, I finished P11 four or five races in a row, so it's not like I was doing a terrible job,” said Bearman, when asked how different things could have been had he adopted his different approach all year. 

“There was definitely a lack of consistency, but the only way of knowing what to do is by doing those mistakes. It's easy to say I could go back and put that process, but that's just me being a second year driver,” he added, referring to how he started three grands prix in 2024. 

“That's the actual difference. There's a lot of changes that I would have done, a lot of differences I would have made to what I did, but how can I do that without the knowledge of what works and what doesn't.

“The first half of the season is purely exploratory and has to be that way because you have to find what works for you and what doesn't.

“F1 is a very different sport to what I've been doing the rest of my life. Definitely, I would have changed things, but it's not as easy as knowing. You have to do mistakes to learn from them and that's really been the story of the season.”

Such progress therefore leaves him looking back on the year very positively, believing it sets him up for a long career at the pinnacle of motorsport. 

“I've been happy with it,” the Briton said. “That's not to say that I'm a perfect and polished driver because I still have a lot to learn and I'm aware of that.

“But I think being aware of that is also very important. I feel like I'm in a good place right now. The kind of structure that I've added to my weekends has been really working.

“I feel like I've found some momentum and rhythm. I think rhythm is also a really powerful thing within this sport. It's not just one thing that's changed.

“It's also a consequence of gaining experience within the sport. Being in race 21 or whatever race we're at now, I lost count. That's also a big factor.”