Haas driver Ollie Bearman says he sensed Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton “wasn’t going to put me in a wall” during their late battle in Formula 1’s 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Bearman had been leading Hamilton up the order to the fringes of the points for 23 laps during the second half of the Baku race, where they were both ultimately boosted to points-scoring positions by Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz crashing on the race’s penultimate tour.
As the final 10 laps commenced and Bearman chased Franco Colapinto’s Williams ahead, Hamilton pounced at Turn 1 to finally get by – with the rookie defending determinedly before losing out on the tightening exit for the 90-degree left-hander – and demote his younger compatriot.
“Well, you know when you go around the outside that he’s going to leave you space, which is a nice feeling,” Bearman said when asked about Hamilton’s move by Motorsport.com.
“Like in Turn 1, I knew that he wasn’t going to put me in a wall, which is a bit less sure with some other drivers. That’s a nice feeling and it’s always very clean but hard when I was racing him.”
Bearman had rejoined from his sole pitstop a few seconds ahead of Hamilton, and their gap, per the former, was “like a yo-yo quite a lot” – the Mercedes being very close once they had cleared Esteban Ocon and Zhou Guanyu – before the latter was able to close in and pass.
“I was really pushing hard for some laps to overtake Franco and my tyres were getting really hot,” Bearman added. “It was exactly at that point that he pounced on me and could overtake me quite easily.
“After that, I needed a few laps and I caught him back up and was almost catching the DRS again.
“It’s annoying that I let him overtake but you can’t make little mistakes with a guy like that behind.”
Bearman ended up 10th after he and Hamilton passed Nico Hulkenberg in the aftermath of the Perez/Sainz shunt, as they reacted better to the green flag board ahead while Hulkenberg slowed – worried his car was damaged after hitting debris from the shunt.
This followed Hulkenberg clipping the wall on the approach to Turn 15 and, fearing he had picked up a puncture with the same wheel that later hit the debris, subsequently fell behind Colapinto on the next lap, before he lost the extra places in the aftermath of the late crash.
“It went green again and I managed to get him with Lewis,” Bearman explained.
“It was an overtake. I’m sorry for him. He had a problem to lose the position also to Franco, but I’m happy to take the point.”
Bearman felt that achievement was “definitely cool”, following his seventh place in Jeddah as a late stand-in for Carlos Sainz at Ferrari.
He added: “It was a tough race. I wasn’t running in the points until the end because of the crash in front.
“The car was really fast and, in all honesty, I was really fast as well, I just lost a lot of time in the first stint just not driving very fast. I was just saving the tyres too much and that was not really necessary.
“I took too much of the experience from FP2 into the race but the track is so different in the race that you can almost forget the long runs from FP2 and start again. I put that down to experience.”
