Bearman accident: fear at Suzuka
During the Japanese Grand Prix, the accident that most worried the drivers with these new regulations occurred: Franco Colapinto noticeably slowed down when approaching the Cucchiaio curve, with a dynamic that forced Oliver Bearman, who was arriving much faster, to quickly swerve away to the left to avoid it. The result was the loss of control of his Haas and a bad impact with the barriers which saw the young Englishman limping out of the car due to a bruised knee.
Bearman hit the pads with a force of 50G and at that moment the speed difference between his Haas and Colapinto’s Alpine was 50 km/h.
Bearman didn’t like Colapinto’s maneuver
After the race Bearman recounted the sensations he experienced: “First of all, I’m absolutely fine. It was a scary moment, but everything is okay and this is the most important thing. The car is in a little worse shape and I can only apologize from the bottom of my heart to the team because I gave them a lot of work.”
Bearman explained about the accident, underlining Colapinto’s somewhat imprudent behavior: “There was ahuge speed difference, 50 km/h. It’s part of these new regulations that I think we’re going to have to get used to, but I felt like I wasn’t given much space, considering how much faster I was coming. And it was something we talked about on Friday with both the other drivers and the stewards. We need to be a little more prepared for these things due to the large speed differences. We as pilots we warned the FIA what could happen and this was the unfortunate result of a huge speed difference that doesn’t exist in F1 but existed before these new regulations.”
