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Ollie Bearman rose to prominence with a surprise Formula 1 debut when Carlos Sainz had to miss the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix with appendicitis.
Now, after months of being heavily linked to Haas, Bearman has been announced as the Ferrari customer team's first 2025 F1 driver.
Bearman became the third youngest driver ever to start a grand prix, the first driver to make their F1 championship race debut for Ferrari since Arturo Merzario in 1972, and the first Briton to line up for the Scuderia since Eddie Irvine in 1999 when he raced in Saudi Arabia.
Read more on Bearman's F1 debut
The Leclerc comparison that shows how good Bearman was
Our verdict on Bearman's outstanding F1 debut and his future
What stood out in Bearman's needlessly apologetic Ferrari
Podcast: How soon could Bearman be racing for Haas?
An F1 debut long looked a matter of time for Bearman, who has impressed Haas with a number of test and FP1 outings over the last eight months and is widely viewed as easily one of the top talents of his generation on the junior single-seater ladder.
Bearman's single-seater career stats
2020: 7th in German F4
2020: 10th in Italian F4 (part-time, 1 win)
2021: 1st in German F4
2021: 1st in Italian F4
2021: 14th in GB3 (part-time, 1 win)
2022: 15th in Formula Regional Asian (part-time)
2022: 3rd in FIA F3
2023: 6th in FIA F2
On his way to single-seaters, the 2005-born Bearman came up with much success through the British karting scene and through international IAME competitions (an arguably less conventional route than international series organised by WSK or the CIK-FIA world and regional championships).
His pivot to single-seaters came in the COVID-disrupted 2020 at the age of 15, and while there was just a win each in German F4 and Italian F4 in that first year, Bearman returned to those two series in 2021 and won them both.
His Italian F4 title-winning campaign included a run of seven consecutive wins (which would've been nine but for a technical infringement exclusion). In October of that year, he was made a Ferrari junior after a Ferrari Driver Academy evaluation event in Maranello.
From there on, Bearman headed straight to the F1-supporting Formula 3 series, swapping from Van Amersfoort Racing to Prema.
There, he was very nearly a champion at his first try. He wound up third among a top three split by just seven points after a chaotic season finale that was curtailed by a red flag.
An F2 promotion with Prema beckoned, and yielded an uneven but generally impressive first season in Formula 2, with some inconsistent scoring but also a double win in Baku - a rare feat in F2 and its predecessor GP2 given the inclusion of the reversed-grid format.
Towards the end of that 2023 campaign, which he would finish sixth, Bearman also drove in two free practice sessions for Ferrari customer Haas - as every F1 team is required to give two sessions to rookies in a season.
Bearman made a big impression in both of those outings, and was rewarded with a planned six-practice programme with Haas in 2024 - in what most regarded as a precursor to his inevitable F1 promotion in 2025.
Bearman's 2024 F2 season has been a struggle as he hasn't quite gelled with the series' new car, combined with missing the two Saudi races and some reliability issues mean he's well outside the top 10. His rookie team-mate Kimi Antonelli has been at least on par with Bearman for most of the season.
Despite that, it's clear Haas has liked what it has seen in those test appearances and has now moved to lock down his services - announcing on the eve of the British Grand Prix that the 19-year-old was its first driver signing for the 2025 F1 season.
