PREMA’s Oliver Bearman is ruing some “painful” blows to his F2 title dreams after a difficult home round at Silverstone.
Bearman arrived at his home event sat fourth in the drivers’ standings and 44 points behind his teammate plus championship leader, Frederik Vesti, as he looked to reduce his deficit on home soil.
A positive start to the weekend saw Bearman finish seventh in Practice then improved to fifth in what he described as a “super tight” session, as he found himself just 0.157 seconds off pole position as the top ten were split by just 0.220s.
Reflecting upon his Qualifying lap, Bearman was critical of a mistake which he made at Stowe, as he commented: “Looking at my lap, I made quite a costly error in turn 15, but anyway, it put us in good positions for both races, and that’s a good thing.
“The car was really fast today, and I want to thank the team, especially after FP which was a difficult one.”
Wet conditions however impacted the Sprint as Bearman surged from fifth up to second in the opening four laps, only for a spin out of Vale into Club at the end of Lap 6 to drop him behind Isack Hadjar with title rival – Theo Pourchaire demoting him to fourth on Lap 8.
Bearman soon found himself in a thrilling battle against fifth-placed Jack Doohan as the Brit mounted a valiant defence of fourth position, during which he squeezed Doohan wide at Stowe on Lap 13 much to Doohan’s fury.
Both drivers however caught and passed Hadjar on Lap 15 and 16 respectively to go third and fourth in the order, but Bearman eventually conceded third as he ran deep at Vale which allowed Doohan through as he slipped down to sixth which was where he eventually finished.
The 18 year-old subsequently described the Sprint as “difficult”, having struggled “a bit with the pace,” which led to a tough second half of the 19 lap race as he felt that he could have taken more” from the Sprint.
Bearman replicated his fast start in the Feature Race as Victor Martins and Ayumu Iwasa fought for the lead during which they both ran deep at the Loop, which led Martins to cut back across as Bearman took a tight inside line to protect the lead which allowed Iwasa to retain second on the exit of the corner.
The Brit soon settled into third position which he held in a net position after making his pit stop under the Safety Car, until he ran wide at Abbey on Lap 15 on a second Safety Car restart which dropped him to 11th in the order.
A badly timed Safety Car on Lap 17 however left Bearman sat ninth and at the mercy of Juan Manuel Correa, on soft tyres, who got past on the restart on Lap 20 but Bearman eventually fought back and recovered to finish sixth as Vesti retired in a mid-race collision.
Post-race, Bearman was harshly deemed at fault for a collision between Campos’ Kush Maini and Ralph Boschung, which dropped him to eighth and left him sat 47 points off Vesti who continued to lead the title race.
On accepting an eighth-placed finish, Bearman quipped: “We maximized the race considering everything, but the mistake is really painful.”
Bearman though was not happy with his weekend as a whole as he vowed to fight back in Hungary to reignite his title dreams, as he commented: “I really need to reset and come back for the rest of the season because I can’t keep having mistakes like this.”
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