Haas driver Oliver Bearman was left disappointed after missing Q3 during Qualifying for Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, despite finishing ahead of teammate Nico Hulkenberg.
Bearman is replacing full-time driver Kevin Magnussen, as the Dane received a race suspension after reaching the 12-penalty points threshold.
The British driver, who adapted fairly quickly to the car -just like he did in Jeddah earlier this year with Ferrari-, underwent a chaotic third practice session, when he crashed and damaged his Haas.
Despite his mishap, Bearman recovered well, his car was repaired and he was up and running in qualifying.
However, things didn’t go as he had hoped, and Bearman missed the top-10 shootout.
“I had a lock-up. Damn it, I’m such an idiot,” the Haas driver was heard on the radio after qualifying.
When asked in depth about the situation, he said the lock-up was “coming up the castle. I was a bit deep in Turn 11. I had a snap into 12 and I lost enough time to stop me from the final round of qualifying.”
He said his incident in practice put him “on the back foot.”
“I think not in confidence,” he added, “but for example the mistake I made in qualifying. I would have already done this mistake in FP3 and figured out how to not do that, so we just lost a lot of mileage.
“First of all, I didn’t account for the track differences, because I basically started from where I left off in FP2, but the track took a step backwards.
“I braked a bit later than I did in FP2 and just went a bit deep. It wasn’t a big issue, but when I tried to get out of it,, it was so slippery off the line that I didn’t manage in time,” he explained.
Despite achieving the 11th-fastest time of the day, Bearman was not content, saying he “should have been in Q3.”
“I’m tough on myself because I know that the car could have done more. If I felt like the car was fast enough for P11, then I would be really happy right now, but the car was definitely quick enough to be in Q3, so that’s why I’m disappointed.”