PREMA’s Oliver Bearman has rued a “difficult” 2024 F2 season-opening round in Bahrain.
After struggling to adapt to the F2 Dallara 2024 car during pre-season testing, Bearman’s woes continued into the season-opening round as he stuttered to 19th in Practice on hard tyres, and could only qualify 18th on the grid for both races on the soft tyre.
Bearman consequently felt that Qualifying was “difficult” with not much belief in the car although he felt that finishing 0.795 seconds off pole-sitter, Gabriel Bortoleto “didn’t feel that bad,” in terms of performance.
“We lacked a bit of confidence to lean on the car and it really shows in these qualifying sessions where you have to be right on the limit consistently. That explains the gap and it’s where we need to focus to improve our performance.”
Bearman’s unexpected start to the season continued to prove difficult after his car went into safety mode at the start of the sprint race, which denied him a chance to attempt the non-mandatory pit stop strategy that PREMA had planned for him and his new teammate – Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
The 18 year-old however felt that the pit stop strategy “would of helped” him if he hadn’t of had his technical issue.
Bearman eventually finished the weekend without a top-ten finish after he suffered damage in a Lap 14 collision with Amaury Cordeel at the final corner en-route to the pits for their pit stops, although he recovered to eighth under a Safety Car restart but finished 15th at the checkered flag.
With F2 back in action in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia between 7-9 March, Bearman iterated that he and PREMA have work to do to advance up the grid, as he said: “There is a lot of work to be done before the next weekend because today we were not competitive enough.”
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