Oliver Bearman says that Ferrari Formula 1 boss Fred Vasseur told him “don’t try to be a hero” when he jumped into Carlos Sainz’s car in Jeddah on Friday.
Bearman was called in after Sainz was ruled out of the rest of the Jeddah event due to appendicitis, with the Spaniard requiring surgery. The 18-year-old had to abandon his Prema F2 seat, having secured pole position for Saturday's feature race, and had only FP3 in which to find his feet before heading into qualifying. He made a strong impression with a confident performance that saw him just miss out on Q3 in 11th place.
“Because it was so late that I literally had to focus straightaway on trying to get up to speed, and catch up the lost time. “Having missed out on Thursday made my life a little bit more difficult, let's say. So I was pretty much flat out with the engineers trying to figure out everything and get up to speed as quickly as possible. “I didn't have time to think about the gravity of the situation. Maybe that was a good thing.
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