Ollie Bearman came home to finish the Austrian GP in 11th, close behind his teammate but missing out on points. However, despite leaving the race with no points, the Brit was still relatively happy with the performance.
Tyre degradation was the talking point of the Austrian GP weekend. With the high temperatures making tyre management vital if drivers hoped to get past each other and make it to the end of the race.
Bearman noted that his stint on the hard tyres is where he struggled as he said in the print media pen. Teammate Esteban Ocon got the jump in the middle stint, with Nico Hülkenberg also passing him.
“I think we had a decent race overall. Honestly, halfway through that hard stint when the tyres started to fall away and probably perform worse than I expected them to.”
While he confessed he didn’t have high hopes for the race, he was impressed with the early stages.
“I knew that we weren’t really going to get a whole lot out of today. We had a great first stint starting on the soft and I managed to make some up some positions which was really nice.”
Despite the strong first stint, having to go on the harder compound tyres is where the difficulties came.
“It left us pretty vulnerable because I had to go pretty early on to the hard. And that left my final two stints to be pretty long and when I was stuck in the traffic of slightly faster cars on the hard the tyres just died.
“So yeah, I think that was really the reason the race came undone, and we need to analyse that.”
Midfield fight
Throughout the race, Bearman was engaged in a couple of wheel-to-wheel battles with Franco Colapinto. The Brit deemed it as ‘hard racing’.
“Well, in the first stint, yeah, I mean, hard racing for sure. I need to look back at the tenth stint because I felt like I had the right space on the outside there. But anyway, I managed to get past not too long afterwards.”
The midfield fights were promising of the performance in the car after what has been a difficult start to the season. Bearman was asked about the midfield battles and if the team can expect the same performance in Silverstone or still need something more.
“I mean, look, we lost probably three big names, which meant we were able to be P10 and P11. Of course that’s our job to capitalise on every opportunity. However, yeah, we are in need of an upgrade package, but I think one’s coming very soon.”
