Road to Formula 1

He was born on 8 May 2005. He spent his early childhood in east London before the family moved to Chelmsford in Essex — the town he calls home. He took up karting in 2013, aged eight, starting with club races in Britain; in 2019, in the X30 Junior class, he won the winter cup in Valencia, the European series and the world final at Le Mans.

He moved up to single-seaters in 2020, spending his first Formula 4 season with US Racing. In 2021, with Van Amersfoort Racing, he won two Formula 4 championships at once — the Italian and the German ADAC series — and became the first driver to take both titles in the same year. In November 2021 he joined the Ferrari Driver Academy.

In 2022 he raced in Formula 3 for Prema, who signed him as a Ferrari junior. He took his first win in the sprint at Spa on 27 August 2022, having started fifth; over the season he made the podium eight times and finished the championship third.

Formula 2 and first practice outings

In 2023 he stepped up to Formula 2, staying with Prema. In Baku he won everything there was to win that weekend: practice, qualifying, the sprint on 29 April and the feature race on 30 April — a first in the series’ history. He then won the feature races in Barcelona on 4 June, from pole, and at Monza on 3 September, and finished his rookie season sixth.

In autumn 2023 Haas ran him in first practice at the Mexico City Grand Prix on 27 October and the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on 24 November. He spent 2024 in Formula 2 with Prema again, combining it with reserve driver duties for Ferrari and Haas: he won the sprints at Spielberg on 29 June, Monza on 31 August and Lusail on 30 November, and missed the races at two rounds — Jeddah and Baku — because he was called up to Formula 1.

Debut for Ferrari

In Jeddah on Thursday 7 March 2024 he took pole in Formula 2 qualifying, and on Friday 8 March he was called into the Formula 1 paddock: Carlos Sainz had been diagnosed with appendicitis, and at 14:19 Ferrari named Bearman as his replacement. With a single practice session behind him he qualified 11th, missing out on Q3 by 0.036 seconds.

He finished the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix on 9 March 2024 in seventh place, scoring points in his very first race. At 18 he became the youngest driver in Ferrari’s history, the youngest Briton ever to start a Grand Prix and the third-youngest driver in the championship at the time of his debut.

Haas: stand-in drives and a contract

His multi-year contract with Haas, starting from the 2025 season, was announced on 4 July 2024. Before it began, he twice drove the team’s car in place of Kevin Magnussen: at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on 15 September 2024, where Magnussen was serving a one-race ban, he finished 10th and scored a point, and at the São Paulo Grand Prix on 3 November 2024 he finished 12th.

First full season

In 2025 his team-mate was Esteban Ocon. His first points as a full-time driver came at the Chinese Grand Prix on 23 March 2025 — eighth place from 17th on the grid. At the Dutch Grand Prix on 31 August 2025 he climbed from 20th to sixth.

In the autumn he put together a run of five points finishes in a row, from Singapore on 5 October to Las Vegas on 22 November 2025. It included fourth place at the Mexico City Grand Prix on 26 October 2025, equalling the best result in Haas history (Romain Grosjean, Austrian Grand Prix, 1 July 2018), and sixth at the São Paulo Grand Prix on 9 November. Over the season he outscored Ocon.

2026 season

In 2026 he races for Haas, with Esteban Ocon still his team-mate. He opened the season with seventh place at the Australian Grand Prix on 8 March, finished fifth from 10th on the grid at the Chinese Grand Prix on 15 March 2026, and was 10th at the Canadian Grand Prix on 24 May. It is the first season of the new technical regulations: around half of the power unit’s output comes from the electrical side, active aerodynamics have arrived, and there are now 11 teams — Cadillac has joined, and Sauber carries on under the Audi name.