In more ways than one, it was a game-changer. The incident that flipped Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix on its head, to the delight of the race winner and the despair of his Mercedes teammate George Russell, means we have a new championship leader in 19-year-old Kimi Antonelli. Yet the long-term connotations, for the 22 drivers and for Formula One’s new era, will be of greater significance.
Ollie Bearman’s thunderous crash on lap 22 at Suzuka was, to put it in simplistic F1 colloquialisms, a “big one”. An impact with the tyre barrier measured at 50G – similar to Max Verstappen’s 2021 shunt at Silverstone – saw the 20-year-old limp away from his cockpit with the assistance of trackside marshals. When his car skated off track, his Haas VF-26 was doing an enormous 191mph.
