– Oliver Bearman says that although he couldn’t walk properly for a few days after his severe crash in Suzuka, it was enough to move his gas foot, so a start in Bahrain would not have been in jeopardy if the race had taken place: “Yes, definitely. I was already in the simulator on Wednesday,” he says.
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But he does not mean the Haas Formula 1 simulator, but training for a different kind of race: “I came back on Monday evening and on Wednesday I then trained for an endurance race with my brother over the weekend,” Bearman says.
“We wouldn’t have had a [Formula 1] race that weekend anyway, but my brother and I had this other endurance race ahead of us. I had to get back up to speed because he had been training the whole time, so I needed a few days to catch up with him,” says the Brit.
He noticed that despite the injuries he could drive quite well: “It was the right leg, so it is only responsible for the gas pedal. Even in the first days when I – let’s say – couldn’t walk normally, I could still drive because you only need the ankle for that.”
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Bearman did not sustain any serious injuries in the Suzuka crash, only a bruise on the knee. “That was a bit of a shame because I had actually planned to do a lot of cycling during the break, but in the first week I had to go to physio and take care of the swelling going down and so on,” he says.
“But after that, I honestly recovered very quickly. Nothing was broken, the ligaments were fine, everything was perfect,” says the Haas driver, who naturally also expects no restrictions for the Formula 1 race in Miami.
In the car itself, Bearman mainly thought of his family and that it probably wasn’t great for them to see those images. “But that’s exactly why I tried to get out of the car immediately. Probably I should have waited a bit there to sort my thoughts a little,” he says.
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