Oliver Bearman says loneliness hit hard after tough F1 races in 2025 with Haas

Haas Formula 1 driver Oliver Bearman has opened up about struggling with loneliness in his rookie season of the championship.

The British driver finished his rookie season with the American outfit 13th in the drivers’ standings, outperforming his experienced team-mate Esteban Ocon, who finished 15th overall. And while he enjoyed some great highs in 2025, such as his fourth-place finish at the Mexican Grand Prix, the 20-year-old driver shared that he also faced some personal challenges.

“Yeah [I struggled with loneliness in F1]. Even to more of an extreme because you’re often travelling for longer,” he explained during an appearance on the High Performance podcast.

“You’re travelling to further places. You’re going to places where people don’t speak English as well sometimes. You know, you can be in Japan or China and the language barriers there as well, and even just not hearing your own language around you is a bit of a strange thing as well.

“I’m very lucky that my dad has made a big effort to come to a lot of races for me last year, and that is almost a bit of continuity for me. But especially at the start of the year, I found the travel to be really challenging just because F1 has 10 more races than F2. But those extra 10 are all of the furthest away destinations on the calendar.

“So all of that extra travel, travelling alone all the time and you go from one extreme of being at the track and being with hundreds of people, having no time to dedicate to yourself, and then you get home into your hotel room, and it’s just you.”

He added: “It’s interesting, particularly after a tough race. It’s a challenge and you’d rather be anywhere else and there were times like after a difficult race where you just wanted to be with your family, or with someone that you loved.

“Like I said, I was very lucky to have my dad at a lot of races, but he couldn’t do all of them. And there were some tough events where you wish you had someone to be with and describe your feelings to, but I guess it’s part of the game.”

Bearman revealed that he worked with a coach to deal with the loneliness after initially bottling up his emotions.

“One thing I was doing was bottling up my emotions a bit at the start of the year. So, I found that quite challenging. I would get home, and it would also be empty. At the start of the year, I was just in Monaco by myself with my girlfriend, and my family wasn’t living there. So I was also getting home and almost just waiting to go to the next race, and I felt like life was revolving around racing, and it was non-stop. I found it quite a lot at the beginning as well.

“I spent a bit of time with a coach at the start of the year once I realised that I was not overwhelmed but struggling a bit with the juxtaposition between being so busy at the track, coming home and having nothing to do, nothing in your schedule, nothing. It’s one extreme to the other.

“I was struggling to cope with that. And one thing that I’ve really understood or paid attention to this year was to be grateful and to take a step back because I think perspective is important as well.

“Times can be tough, but at the end, if I told 10-year-old me what I’m doing now, I think he’d be pretty happy, and putting things into perspective and appreciating everything around you, I think, is an incredibly important attribute.”

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