PREMA’s Oliver Bearman is happy to have achieved “damage limitation” in a difficult Austrian round of 2023 F2 season.
Bearman entered the weekend sat fourth in the championship with a 40 point deficit to his teammate, Frederik Vesti, but endured tough Practice and Qualifying sessions where he was 11th and 19th fastest respectively.
Track limits though played a huge part in his poor sessions which Bearman described as “tough”, whilst he praised PREMA for having provided “a good car” which he couldn’t convert into a top-ten grid slot due to trigger-happy stewards concerning track limits.
The 18 year-old however recovered in the Sprint Race to finish eighth due to Clement Novalak’s disqualification, which reducded his chamionship deficit slightly to 39 points.
Bearman though began that race on the wrong tyre after he had opted for wet tyres on a damp track but conditions rapidly dried, which forced him to switch to the soft tyres at the end of Lap 3 with the Brit happy with his race pace on the soft tyres.
Reflecting upon his improvement on soft tyres, Bearman commented: “Anyway, the pace was very good when we put the slicks, made some good overtakes, but after that, at the end of the race, when I was in clean air, we struggled a little with the pace and I couldn’t move forward much.”
The Feature Race saw further improvement as Bearman executed the alternate strategy of softs then super-soft tyres to climb to fifth at the checkered flag, which left the Brit “quite happy with the recovery” despite falling 44 points behind Vesti who finished third. .
Bearman subsequently felt that fifth place had minimised the damage to his title challenge in a tough weekend, as he explained: “We did a bit of damage limitation today, with a bit of luck and a good strategy. The car was great, and we made a positive step from yesterday, so I’m really happy on that side.”
Bearman now is preparing for his home round at Silverstone, Great Britain which takes place this coming weekend, but is keen to improve his one-lap pace across Practice and Qualifying.
Summing up his targets for Silverstone in front of home fans, Bearman concluded: “I know what I need to work on, and it’s clear going into Silverstone that with a better Friday, we can keep scoring some good points.”
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