Oliver Bearman’s “scary” crash at Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix, where he slammed into a barrier at over 300 kilometers per hour, has led to Formula 1’s governing body announcing that it would hold meetings to assess the impact of the sport’s new technical regulations.
In the early stages of Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix Bearman was chasing down Alpine driver Franco Colapinto, when he lost control of his Haas VF-26 at Spoon curve and careened into a barrier, with estimates holding the impact was in excess of 50 Gs.
You can see the moment here:
Bearman was helped from the car and checked out at the medical center, where x-rays did not show signs of any fractures.
Speaking after the incident, the Haas driver outlined what happened from his point of view.
“Everything’s good, first of all. I’m absolutely fine. It was a scary moment that happened out there but everything’s ok, which is the main thing,” began Bearman. “The car is a bit worse for wear, but we have a month now to reset and come back. I can only apologise from the bottom of my heart to the team for that because it’s a lot of work for them.”
He then walked through the discrepancy in speed between him and Colapinto right before impact. While Bearman was pushing, Colapinto was harvesting energy in the high-speed curve, a facet of the new technical regulations. That difference in speed led to Bearman taking the evasive action you see in the above clip, ending with him in the barrier.
“It was a massive overspeed, 50 [kilometers per hour], which is a real … it’s a part of these new regulations that I guess we have to get used to, but also I felt like I wasn’t really given much space given the huge excess speed that I was carrying,” described Bearman.
According to Bearman, this issue was raised by the drivers Friday ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix.
”It’s something that we spoke about on Friday with the other drivers and the stewards, that we need to be a bit more lenient, a bit more prepared because of these huge deltas in speed,” continued the Haas driver.
“I think we’ve, as a group, warned the FIA what can happen, and this has been a really unfortunate result of a massive delta speed that we’ve never seen before in F1 until these new regulations.”
After the race, the FIA confirmed that a “structured review [of the new regulations] would take place after the opening phase of the season:”
Williams driver Carlos Sainz Jr., the Director of the Grand Prix Drivers Association, stated after the race that he is “excited” to see what changes can be implemented ahead of the next race, the Miami Grand Prix at the start of May.
“I am hopeful that we will come up with something a bit better for Miami, given the fact that the accident with Ollie today, we’ve been warning them about this happening with these kinds of closing speeds,” said Sainz when speaking with Sky Sports F1. “These kinds of accidents were always going to happen, and I’m not very happy with what we’ve had up until now. Hopefully, we come up with a better solution that doesn’t create these massive closing speeds and a safer way of racing.”
Sainz then closed with something of a warning from the drivers.
“As drivers, we’ve been extremely vocal that the problem is not only qualifying, but it’s also racing. We’ve been warning that this kind of accident was always going to happen. Here, we were lucky that there was an escape road. Now imagine going to Baku, or going to Singapore, or going to Vegas, and having these kinds of closing speeds and crashes next to the walls,” continued the Williams driver.
“We, as GPDA, have warned the FIA that these accidents are going to happen a lot with this set of regulations, and we need to change something soon, if we don’t want them to happen. It was 50G, I heard, just imagine what kind of crash you could have in Vegas, Baku, etc.
“I hope it serves as an example, and the teams listen to the drivers, and not so much to the teams and some people who said the racing was okay, because the racing is not okay.”
Oscar Piastri, who finished second in the Japanese Grand Prix, spoke during the FIA Press Conference about a similar incident he experienced during practice, as well as his own concerns regarding moments like Bearman’s.
“I mean, we’ve spoken about that being a possibility since these cars were conceptualised. Yeah, it’s what we’re stuck with, with the power units. There’s no easy way of getting around it,” started Piastri. “From what I saw there was no flashing light from Colapinto, so I don’t even think he was super clipping either, which is obviously a bit of a concern.
“I had a pretty close call in free practice with Nico [Hülkenberg] because he caught me about three times as quick as I expected on the straight, and we were both at full throttle. So, I think there’s clearly an element of learning for us as drivers, and where the accident happened it’s not a place where you expect someone to come from so far behind and have such a big speed difference. And whilst we’re learning that, unfortunately things like this are probably going to happen, which is a shame.
“But, you know, I think we understand as a sport there’s a lot of things we need to tweak, a lot of things we need to change, and especially on safety grounds, yes, there’s some things that need to be looked into pretty quickly.”
With the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix, the FIA now has extra time ahead of Miami to address this issue.
It is clear the drivers are hoping for changes after what they have seen so far this season, and what they saw with Bearman on Sunday.
