Oliver Bearman: I’m heading into a regulation change for first time in my life

The 2025 F1 season was Bearman's first full season after making his debut in 2024, replacing an ill Carlos Sainz at Ferrari for that year's Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

He also replaced Kevin Magnussen at Haas in Azerbaijan and Sao Paulo and impressively scored points in Jeddah and Baku.

Bearman was a revelation in 2025 as he consistently beat his teammate and veteran driver Esteban Ocon.

The Briton scored points on eight occasions, while his best result was fourth place in the Mexico City Grand Prix.

And while he has done well in his rookie season, Bearman now has to adapt to a totally different F1 car with the new 2026 machines built to new regulations with new power units and chassis, which require quite a bit of management from the drivers.

“I'm heading into a regulation change for the first time in my life, really," Bearman said after Haas launched their VF-26 on Monday. “Last year was a big step for me.

"But I think even from the beginning, we knew that if we put the car in the right window, we were still going to be able to fight for points, and we had an idea of the competitiveness of the car.

“That lack of knowledge heading into 2026 is good and bad, as on one side I feel like we can really have an impact straight away, but also it’s horrible not knowing.

“I would like to skip forward six months to see where we are, but I’m going to be giving it everything to make sure that where we are is as high up as possible," the 20-year-old maintained.

When quizzed about his expectations in terms of teams' pecking order, he said: “It’s impossible to gauge where we're going to be right now.

“Everything I’m seeing from the team is positive, but we don’t know how we stack up, and we won’t know until Qualifying in Australia.

“Even then, I feel like in the first few races reliability is going to be playing a big factor. There are going to be teams and people making mistakes with these new regulations.

"It’s going to be tough to establish a true pecking order," Bearman concluded. (Quotes from Formula 1 Official Site)