Oliver Bearman has used Haas’ own season-launch interview series to draw a clear line under his rookie campaign, telling the team he has matured into a more confident, more outspoken driver heading into the 2026 regulation reset.
Speaking on the British-American team’s "The Journey" feature, the 21-year-old looked back on a debut year that delivered a P6 in the Netherlands and a string of strong qualifying performances, but more importantly forced him to step into a leadership role he had never carried before.
"It was a big year for myself and I think it’s probably the most learning that I’ll ever do in a year," Bearman said. "It’s my first time stepping into Formula 1, and the first and the last time that I’ll have that experience. I matured a lot."
Bearman explained that the sheer scale of an F1 operation, compared with his Formula 2 environment, was the first thing he had to adjust to.
"I’ve gone from a team in F2 with 20 people coming to the track — of course the team was very big back at the factory, but trackside there were 20 people — and now that number is tripled at least," he said. "We also have almost 400 staff back at home. The team has grown exponentially. The developments we make on the car directly come as an influence of what we’re saying as drivers."
That responsibility, he conceded, did not come naturally at first.
"It’s tough to assume it automatically. It takes a while, and I think I took the position well, but it’s not overnight that it happens," Bearman said. "It definitely took a good few races to understand my position within the team, and that position is very different to what it is in lower categories."
The clearest internal change, by his own description, is a willingness to push back.
"Now I’m someone who’s more outgoing, less afraid to speak up and to give my opinion," he said. "It’s tough to feel like your opinion will be valued straight away. It’s just natural that you’re coming in as a kid basically, and you need to earn that. I’m just a bit more outspoken, I understand a bit more what I want, so I can be a bit more picky in terms of how should we approach weekends, how should we set the car up."
The 2026 rules overhaul — new chassis dimensions, fresh hybrid power units and a different aerodynamic philosophy — is something most of his rivals have already lived through several times. Bearman framed it as an opportunity rather than a hurdle.
"This is my first regulation change, and some of my competitors have been through two or three or four of them," he said. "This will be a very new experience for me, and that excites me because it’s a great opportunity to learn. Hopefully throughout my career there’ll be lots of these changes, and it means that I’ve been there for a while."
He also pushed back against the suggestion that swapping cars every year is daunting, pointing out that he has been doing it almost his entire career.
"I’m kind of used to it. I’ve been changing category, changing car pretty much every year in the last five or six years," Bearman said. "It would have been strange to have the same car twice in a row, because I’ve never had that before."
The clearest statement on his ambition came when he was pressed on whether he sets specific season targets.
"I have a goal in life, in my career, but it’s a long-term goal," Bearman said. "My goal in life is to become a world champion. But that’s not an overnight process, and that’s not my goal for this year. I think it would be unrealistic. I feel like this stage is a stage where I’m building the foundations to hopefully one day be in a position to do that."
That long-view framing, rather than an immediate points target, is now the lens he says he uses to judge weekends.
"I’m not the type of person to sit there and say, ‘Okay, I want to finish sixth this race,’" he said. "It’s a bit bigger picture than that. I want to make another step closer to my dream, and the only way I can do that is by increasing my consistency and improving the way I communicate with the team. The full package has to be there if you want to ever be in the position to win a world championship."
For Haas, hearing their second-year driver describe the foundations of a title bid — from inside their own content series — is a notable shift in tone after a 2025 season that was largely framed around survival and learning rather than ambition.
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*Originally published on [Formula News](https://newsformula.one/article/oliver-bearman-haas-second-season-rookie-2026-foundation-world-champion). Visit for full coverage.*