Formula 1 drivers may be at peak fitness and drive 200mph in cars that most of us would be too scared to apply full throttle in, but this doesn’t stop them from being human. Ollie Bearman, the Haas F1 driver who’s pegged for a possible future at Ferrari, has the same fears as the majority of us: spiders.
During a fan event at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, the young driver described the fear he felt when he woke up to an eight-legged creature sitting beside his head to Lewis Hamilton’s dismay.
Stood beside team-mate Esteban Ocon and Ferrari drivers Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, Bearman delivered the horror story.
“I got woken up at 2am with a spider next to my head,” he said to gasps from his colleagues. “I swear! I swear! I texted my travel team. I was like, ‘Guys, I’m moving. I’m not staying here.'”
He was asked for further details.
“I heard him, kind of walking up to me. I open my eyes, and he was right there,” he said.
“No way!” Leclerc answered with his jaw on the floor.
Asked just how big this creature actually was, Bearman held up his hand. “It was like the size of my palm!” he said, pointing. “Yes! I swear! I swear! And then I hit him away, I put the torch on, and I couldn’t find him. So when I moved to my new hotel, I haven’t opened my suitcase yet because I’m scared he’s in there.”
Hamilton has been racing and visiting Malaysia for almost two decades, and he was still surprised to hear that the country has spiders that large.
“I would have been sleeping in the car!” he laughed. “I didn’t even realise that Malaysia had spiders!
“Oh my god, that changes everything. What?! I’ve been coming for 20 years, I didn’t know that.”
Bearman was likely describing the huntsman spider, which frequents houses and hotels around the country. While they’re harmless, they do use venom on small prey. Horribly, instead of creating webs, they run quickly across trees, walls and ceilings.
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