A bewildered Oliver Bearman has admitted that his crash in Saturday’s final practice session in Monaco was “the strangest” he has ever experienced in his F1 career.
Approaching Massenet, the Haas driver strayed onto a dusty section of the circuit while negotiating traffic. Within moments, he was a passenger.
“I just picked up the dust and lost it,” Bearman recounted. “It was the strangest crash I ever had, it was so uncharacteristic of the car and everything that had happened that weekend.
“Suddenly I was facing the wrong way, it was super strange. Watching back, I just picked up a bit of dust. I was a bit more on the right avoiding the [Mercedes] car in traffic, and that's just one of the things about Monaco.
“But the guys did such a good job to get the car back together and it was feeling great in quali, so it’s a shame.”
A fast car, a missed opportunity
Despite significant damage to the right-hand side of the VF-26, Haas mechanics completed the repairs in time for qualifying. Bearman returned to the track confident that a strong result remained possible.
And that optimism appeared justified.
©Haas
According to the Briton, his fastest flyer in Q1 – interrupted by Gabriel Bortoleto’s late crash in the segment – was more than quick enough to comfortably secure passage into the next phase of qualifying.
“The lap that I was on when it went yellow was enough, easily, to be in the top 10 at that stage of quali, which would easily have got us through into Q2,” the Briton pondered.
“I really think we had what it takes to be fighting on the verge of Q3 today, and obviously qualifying is where it counts, so I'm really sad to be standing here [in the media pen while Q2 was under way].”
Cold tyres, no grip
When the session resumed, Bearman was forced into a different preparation routine than the one Haas had successfully used throughout the weekend. The consequences were immediate.
“After the red flag, we queued for two and a half minutes, I had to do out-push [pushing on the out-lap] on a new set of tyres,” he explained.
“Consider that for the rest of the weekend we've been doing out-prep, so my tyres were kind of 10C too cold, and I was sliding all over the place for the whole lap. Just not enough grip to put together a lap there at the end, but it's really a shame.”
Television cameras captured one of the most dramatic moments of that final attempt as Bearman wrestled his Haas through a major slide in Monaco’s high-speed swimming-pool section.
©Haas
With elimination looming, Bearman had pushed beyond the limit in a desperate effort to rescue his session.
“Just no grip,” he added. “I was pushing 110%, giving it everything, because I knew I needed an ‘everything’ lap to get through, but really the grip was just nowhere. I was five tenths down on my best lap into the tunnel.
“Because I did my lap, obviously I had to back off with the yellow flag, and into the tunnel I was
five tenths down, so I said ‘Okay, [either] I gain three tenths’ – which is what I needed – ‘or I'm not getting through’, so I gave it everything and it wasn't quite enough.”
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The result was a disappointing 19th-place qualifying finish, his worst of the season. Yet the raw pace shown before the yellow flags suggested a very different story beneath the final classification.
For Bearman, Monaco Saturday was not defined solely by a baffling crash or a Q1 exit. It was a day that began with one of the strangest moments of his young Formula 1 career and ended with the frustration of knowing a far stronger result had slipped through his fingers.
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