That is a wrap on a genuinely brutal stretch of racing, and Ollie Bearman could not hide his relief to finally leave it behind. The Haas man crossed the line a despondent 17th in Sao Paulo last Sunday, putting the final nail in a punishing triple header that yielded next to nothing for the team.
Everything started unraveling right at the lights in Brazil. Following a superb wet lap in qualifying that put him in the top 10, Bearman tangled with Fernando Alonso within the opening handful of corners, sending both drivers wide. He managed to claw some ground back initially, but agonizingly slow pit stops dropped him straight from P10 down to P17. On a chaotic afternoon where Nico Hulkenberg dragged his machine to P10 despite serving a 10-second time penalty, points were there for the taking. Instead, the team squandered another opportunity.
It was a good race to be honest, I had great pace, and we were in the fight for points, and I was in the points when I was taken out. It happens, it just sucks.
“I just want to go home and reset. It has been a horrible three weeks, we have missed two opportunities to score points, and we just need to move on and do better,” Bearman said.
Unfortunately, Brazil was merely the final chapter of a three-week disaster. The misery began in Austin when a fierce wheel-to-wheel fight with Pierre Gasly ended in tears. Bearman dived up the inside, made contact, and picked up a heavy load of damage alongside a 10-second time penalty for causing a collision that ultimately forced his retirement. At the time, he called it a racing incident, arguing that the resulting car damage was punishment enough.
Mexico City brought even worse luck. Running with great pace and fighting for points, Bearman was pitched into a spin at Turn 4 when he was hit from behind by none other than Nico Hulkenberg, causing terminal damage once again. That chaos allowed stand-in team mate Ryo Hirakawa to inherit P10 from a 13th-place finish, leaving Bearman empty-handed.
“I just got smashed off. I was turning into Turn 4, and the next thing I knew, I was looking at everyone else coming past me, facing the wrong way,” Bearman recalled of the Mexico incident. “It was a good race to be honest, I had great pace, and we were in the fight for points, and I was in the points when I was taken out. It happens, it just sucks.”
The math behind the misery is stark. Haas managed a meager single point across the entire three-race swing, while their rivals Audi hauled in five to dangerously close the gap in the standings for seventh place. With only three rounds remaining, the Haas advantage at the front of that battle has shrivelled down to just three points.
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