Haas driver Oliver Bearman rues his ‘real issue’ that can cost him ‘infinite lap time’

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Oliver Bearman has endured an up-and-down first full season on the Formula 1 grid in 2025 at Haas, with the British rookie boasting just eight points despite his early highs.

The 20-year-old flew out of the gates with three top-10 finishes through the first four rounds of the 2025 F1 season. But in the 10 races since Bearman took P8 in the Chinese GP and P10 finishes in the Japanese and Bahrain Grands Prix, he has not earned a better result than P11.

Bearman even finished the Emilia Romagna and Spanish Grands Prix in only P17, and retired in Miami (engine) and Hungary (floor damage). The Haas rookie’s only high from the past 10 rounds was his P7 finish in the F1 Sprint at the Belgian GP for two of his eight points in 2025.

Additionally, Bearman has been criticised for making some “stupid mistakes”, like crashing in the pit lane under a red flag during FP3 at Silverstone in July. The Havering native span while attacking the pit entry, which drew a 10-place grid penalty that dropped him from P8 to P18.

Oliver Bearman rues F1’s ground-effect regulations making cars that are ‘difficult to drive’

Bearman’s P8 in Q3 at the British GP remains his best qualifying result of the 2025 F1 season so far. In contrast, Australia, Bahrain and Miami mark his worst qualifying results, having had the slowest lap times during Q1. He has made Q3 twice, but been eliminated in Q1 six times.

READ MORE: Who is 2025 Haas driver Oliver Bearman? Everything to know

The consequence of any dip in confidence is a huge cause for Bearman’s inconsistency, with F1’s ground-effect regulations introduced in 2022 producing cars that are “difficult to drive”. Drivers are often made to use stiff set-ups that let teams run their cars closer to the ground.

Bearman told Motorsport.com: “The cars are difficult to drive in this era. And you need full confidence in the car, because the level of downforce is the highest we’ve seen. So, when it goes wrong, it goes wrong in a big way, and you can’t catch it.

“So, if you don’t have full confidence, it’s infinite lap time lost. And there were some scenarios in qualifying where I wasn’t fully confident with the car, and the lap time I lost was hugely disproportionate to the difference in confidence.

“It’s really easy to get into a spiral of bad levels of confidence and, therefore, [it is] really important to grab it back as soon as possible. But it is a real issue, and definitely with more experience, you learn how to overcome it. But at this stage in our careers, it is tough.”

Oliver Bearman only felt ‘full confidence’ with Haas’ 2025 F1 car in round 12 of the 14 held

Bearman only felt “full confidence” with Haas’ 2025 car for the first time at July’s British GP, when the Briton’s grid penalty for crashing in FP3 negated his best qualifying result thus far this year. The London-born star was 0.416s quicker than his teammate Esteban Ocon in Q2.

Such was the confidence that the VF-25 gave him at Silverstone that Bearman felt the same feeling with Haas’ 2025 car as Ferrari’s 2024 car. He sampled the Scuderia’s SF-24 in 2024 after replacing Carlos Sainz for the Saudi Arabian GP and Charles Leclerc for FP1 in Mexico.

But having gone 10 Grands Prix without a point, to also fall from 11th to 19th place in the F1 drivers’ standings, Bearman will strive to return from the summer break at the Dutch Grand Prix on August 29-31 feeling upbeat. He has not raced at Zandvoort since the 2023 F2 term.