What Does Bearman's Success Mean For Contract Silly Season?

If Lewis Hamilton's move to Ferrari put the cat among the pidgeon's for F1's contract silly season, Bearman's performance in Saudi Arbia has shaken it like a snow globe!!! 
When he arrived at the Jeddah track on Friday morning Ollie Bearman was excited to turn his Formula 2 Pole position into a Sprint race win but by the end of the day he would be wearing a different set of Italian Red overalls to his usual Prema ones and Qualifying just 0.036 off Q3 in a Ferrari!! 

​He went on to finish his first F1 race 7th ahead of Norris & Hamilton who were chasing him down on brand new Softs, showing he was more than ready to race in F1 full time. 
But Ollie is not the only F2 star good enough for Formula 1. There are currently 2 Formula 2 champions without an F1 drive. Brazilian Felipe Drugavich, the 2022 f2 champion & currently reserve driver for Aston Martin and Frenchman Theo Pourchaire 2023 F2 champion and currently warming a seat at the back of the Sauber garage or simulator room, both deserve to be in an F1 car. They showed over a season(Drugavich winning the champ long before the season ended) they could race hard, manage the car, work well with the team and ultimately win over a whole season and with F2 being the accepted path to F1 its a hard pill to swallow that these 2 over qualified rookies can't get an F1 drive. Pouchaire actually beat Bearman in the Championship last year, besting Olli's Prema Team mate Fredrik Vesti to the title. 

With so much F2 talent sitting in the F1 garages not racing, can Bearman's stella performance in Jeddah start to make the f1 teams look to the future talent of the young drivers rather than extend the careers of its older veterans like Hamilton, Alonso, Ricciardo, Magnussen, Hulkenberg & Bottas. 
Also under the microscope now will be the young drivers who haven't progressed. Tsunoda was a highly anticipated young driver who was 'destined for Redbull' when he arrived in f1 but hasn't delivered, Sargeant has struggled since he joined Willaims, Zhou despite his huge financial backing and scoring a point on debut has again not advanced in the way he was predicted to and let's not even get started on Lance Stroll. 
At the end of 2024 14 drivers will be out of contract (15 possibly with Lance Strolls current contract end date not known.) It would be a waste of talent and opportunity for the teams to ignore the talent that has and are coming from Formula 2

Its defiantly hard to predict who will make the successful jump to f1 with some drivers out performing in F2 &3 then joining f1 and just not cutting it(Stroll), but what's clear is that the compulsory young driver tests are not enough to show the teams what the drivers true talent is in the F1 cars and there needs to be more opportunity to see what these young drivers can do. 
While it's brilliant to see drivers like Kimi Räikkönen, Hamilton and Alonso driving well past the accepted age of retirement and still performing at the highest level it is crushing the careers of young driver who have the skill, drive and experience to be in Formula 1 focusing their whole young lives on the pursuit of F1. 

Mercedes and Mclaren seem to be the first to look to the future for drivers, with Mclaren contracting 2021 F2 Champion Oscar Piastri(after he sat out for a season at Alpine) and Mercedes making clear a big part of Hamilton's decision to move to Ferrari was them only offering him a 1 year deal to keep the door open for Kimi Antonelli(team mate to Bearman at Prema) who has won every series he has ever raced in. Mercedes have helped Kimi skip Formula 3 and go straight into F2 where he has scored in his 1st & 2nd Feature Races so far. 
Let's hope that at the very least we see Bearman on the 2025 grid as well as some other young drivers who could possibly take the fight to Max sooner rather than later!!! ​

Joanna Blackmore 
​Writer @f1journal.co.uk