"The best session of my life!"- Ferrari prodigy hails 'amazing' FP2 session at the F1 2024 Azerbaijan GP

Ferrari junior driver Oliver Bearman claimed that the FP2 session at the 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Friday was the 'best session' of his life. The British driver is replacing Kevin Magnussen at the Haas F1 team for the weekend as the Danish driver is currently serving a race ban after accumulating 12 penalty points on his FIA super license.

Bearman has already signed with the American for a full-time race seat for the 2025 season and got the chance to test out the VF-24 for the first time in a competitive weekend. The young British driver had impressed everyone with his one-off outing earlier in the season in Jeddah, where he replaced Carlos Sainz in the Ferrari on short notice.

The Ferrari prodigy finished the FP1 and FP2 sessions in P11 and P10, respectively, and was ahead of Nico Hulkenberg in the opening practice session in the timing sheets.

Speaking with F1.com, Oliver Bearman claimed that the FP2 session, where he finished P10 behind his teammate Nico Hulkenberg's P8, was 'amazing', saying:

“FP2 was amazing, the best session of my life! No, it was nice to do a full Friday, build up step by step without having to rush anything. I was quite happy with how the day went, and how it finished up. I was confident in the car, which is really important at a track like this, so a good day,” Bearman said.

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Ferrari junior driver talks about the experience of driving an F1 car in Baku

Haas F1 driver Oliver Bearman said that it was trickier to drive the F1 cars around the tight and twisty middle sector at the Baku City Circuit compared to F2 cars. When asked about the experience of driving an F1 car in the narrow sectors at Baku, the 19-year-old underlined that he was gradually building his confidence to navigate around. He said:

“Yeah, it’s tight. I only hit the wall once today in FP2, but it’s little things, you play with the margins here. I really built up my confidence and at the end, I felt really good. I was taking it easy, step by step, but now I’ve built some confidence I feel like I can start to increase," Bearman said.

“My goal is to be proud of my performance. That’s going to be done by improving myself, eventually finishing at a level that I know I’m capable of, and staying clean – having a clean tomorrow will be important,” he added.

While there were some fears that there would be a 'lack of continuity' for the next season with both Magnussen and Hulkenberg leaving, team boss Ayao Komatsu laid to rest any such concerns, commenting that the next car would be a development of this year's car and believed that there would be an easy transition for the drivers in the coming season.

Owing to his P7 finish in Jeddah, Oliver Bearman is tied on six points with Kevin Magnussen but is ahead of him in the driver's standings due to a higher finishing position.