The Haas driver admitted that he did not know how to manage his expectations at the Australian GP. "I went into the weekend with the wrong mindset. We had a car that wasn't the most docile. It was a really bad start," he explained.
Oliver Bearman has confessed that he started his rookie season in Formula 1 with the "wrong mindset," a focus error that cost him dearly at the 2025 Australian Grand Prix, his first race as a Haas full time driver.
The Briton, who had impressed in his debut with Ferrari in Saudi Arabia 2024, suffered a weekend to forget at Albert Park with a crash in FP1, a spin in FP3 that left him stuck in the gravel, and a race that started from the pit lane and ended in fourteenth position.
Bearman reflected on that start in an episode of F1:Off The Grid and admitted that he did not know how to manage his expectations: "That weekend overall was very tough, I probably went into the weekend with the wrong mindset. On top of that, we had a car that wasn't the most docile. It was a really bad start" explained the Haas driver, who arrived in the category with the pressure of having proven his talent in the Saudi Arabia emergency.
The Briton acknowledged that he made many mistakes during his first full season, but that he learned from them and used them to grow: "Last year, I made a lot of mistakes; there are many mistakes that, in hindsight, I definitely could and should have avoided. It taught me very quickly how I need to approach an F1 weekend. But there are also some mistakes that I think taught me a lot. It's okay to do it once, not twice. So don't do that," said Bearman.
Despite the bad start, Bearman managed to recover during the season and signed a spectacular performance at the Mexican Grand Prix, where he equaled Haas's best race result with a fourth place: "That was a crazy weekend. We were just flying. We were really, really fast and we managed to keep behind all those very fast cars and very fast drivers" recalled Bearman about that weekend in which he overtook drivers in superior cars.
Bearman finished his rookie season in thirteenth position in the drivers' championship with 41 points, surpassing his experienced teammate Esteban Ocon, who finished fifteenth with 38 points, a positive balance that demonstrates his capacity for adaptation and learning throughout a year that started with doubts but ended with great performances.
The Briton hopes that in 2026 he can maintain the consistency he showed in the second half of last season and avoid the mistakes that cost him points at the start of the championship. His goal is to establish himself as the leader of the Haas team and prove that he deserves a seat in Formula 1.
