Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu has pleaded with Oliver Bearman not to ‘beat himself up’, following his Formula 1 driver’s frightening crash in the Japanese Grand Prix.
After qualifying a lowly 18th and making an earlier pitstop than most, Bearman was approaching 17th-placed Franco Colapinto’s Alpine with a 45km/h speed difference coming into Spoon, which came as a surprise to him.
The Briton lost control at 308km/h, crashing into the wall with a 50G impact. He hobbled out of his car and was diagnosed with a right knee contusion.
Bearman was apologetic following the accident, but Komatsu was keen to remind the youngster that he has single-handedly hauled Haas up to fourth in the constructors’ championship, thanks to the 16 points he scored in Australia and China – he took a remarkable fifth-place finish at Shanghai.
“He’s just very, very disappointed in himself,” Komatsu commented. “Again, that’s the good thing about Ollie, if you like: he’s not making any excuses, he was really beating himself up.
“So I said, ‘Look, you know, you’ve done some amazing races, you got us 17 points out of two race weekends’.” Haas team-mate Esteban Ocon opened up his account at Suzuka, scoring one point on top of Bearman’s 16. “So, okay, his accident cost us points today, but as the old saying [goes], we win and lose together.
“And then I said, ‘Look, you’ve done so many good things. Yes, today didn’t go very well, but there’s no point beating yourself up, you know, we just got to get up from here’. And then he said, ‘Yeah, but there’s no excuse, this is a speed delta’.
“Look, he’s hard on himself, which is good. But sometimes if you are too hard on yourself, it’s not. But I’m sure he will bounce back, we’ll bounce back. We do it together. That’s the most important thing.”
Oliver Bearman, Haas F1 Team, Ayao Komatsu, Haas F1 Team
Photo by: James Sutton / LAT Images via Getty Images
Komatsu not only wanted Bearman to retain a positive mindset, but would rather not hold his driver accountable for the incident, in light of the aforementioned mitigating circumstance.
“Of course, he’s kicking himself, he’s saying like, ‘I should have done better, no excuse’. But, you know, you look at it, that 50km/h difference in closing speed is massive,” the Japanese pointed out.
Asked if the incident was caused by a mixture of driver error and F1’s new rules, he replied: “‘Error’ is a big strong word, to be honest. You could say ‘small misjudgement’, but it’s scary though, that closing speed. When I look on the GPS lap before, it’s totally understandable and the correct decision to go for it there, but it’s just huge.
“This is only the third race in this regulation, so that’s something he’s never experienced. So I don’t even call it ‘error’, you know.”
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