Ferrari junior Oliver Bearman shocked the motorsports world with a win at Red Bull‘s backyard! The 19-year-old Prema driver has struggled to live up to the competition since this year’s start. A major reason behind Prema’s lack of success has been the new rules about a new generation of Formula 2 cars. However, Ollie Bearman has now broken his streak of not winning any podiums as he secured the top spot at the Austrian Sprint Race. But after the session, he revealed a life-threatening moment while waiting in the cooldown room with Paul Aron and Pepe Marti.

Oliver Bearman’s name has been thrown around a lot in F1 town recently. The Briton surprised every fan and pundit with his maiden Formula 1 Championship points at the Saudi Arabian GP this year. He had to step in at the last moment for Scuderia driver Carlos Sainz who had an appendix surgery. Bearman secured the 7th position in Jeddah and became the youngest-ever racer to score points in his F1 debut. Now, he has earned even more promising results with Prema in Formula 2 as he won the Austrian Sprint and destroyed the team’s dry run.

However, the race at the Red Bull Ring presented many challenges to Bearman. He captured an early lead by surpassing pole-sitter Kush Maini. Then, he drew away from the DRS region by extending the gap between him and his closest rival, Pepe Marti, to over 1.5s. At one point, even the F2 Championship leader Paul Aron came to the front and attacked Bearman’s position. However, Oliver Bearman led 28 laps and finished #1.

Once the Sprint was over, Ollie sat in the cooldown room with Aron and Marti, where he pointed to the footage of the race and spoke of the time when he felt the biggest hurdle.”I thought I was gonna get k***** here,” Oliver Bearman noted, talking about the moment when he reached Turn 3 during his first lap and his rivals came up from behind.

Later, in the post-race press conference, he commented: “[It] was quite close into Turn 3 for me. I had to kind of back out and take a wide line because I thought I was going to get collected.” The frontrunners’ cars were almost nose-to-tail with each other at Turn 3, but the Ferrari reserve driver managed to get out unharmed. So, how did Oliver Bearman feel about his resounding Sprint win in Austria?

Bearman says Austrian Sprint win brought out ‘mixes feelings’

The last time Oliver Bearman won a Formula 2 race had been a year ago at the Monza feature race. The Briton has earned fame for his F1 debut this season but in F2, he could not get a podium win until now. However, at the Austrian Sprint, he captured an early lead and maintained it despite pressure from Campos racer Pepe Marti who chased the Prema prodigy. In the end, the gap between Bearman and Marti was just 1.72s, but what matters is the Ferrari junior has won the race.

After being deprived of a podium for so long, Bearman’s win comes as a spell of rain amidst Prema’s drought. Commenting on it, Ollie said,  “Yeah, [I have] mixed feelings, of course, it’s just a Sprint Race. But it’s nice to get a result that makes the team happy. We’ve been working really hard this year, we have been struggling of course a little bit. It’s nice to bring back a result that shows the hard work is going somewhere.”

Oliver Bearman has already been the topic of much debate during F1’s silly season for 2025. With his Austrian Sprint win, the Briton has just furthered his chances of getting into the pinnacle of motorsports next year. As of now, the speculations claim the 19-year-old is up for Kevin Magnussen’s seat at Haas. If that goes through, it will spell danger for Esteban Ocon’s career since the Frenchman might have to leave F1 if he doesn’t get the seat at the American outfit. Do you think Guenther Steiner will toss the experienced ex-Alpine racer out to take the rookie? Let us know in the comments below.