Eddie Jordan’s worrying Carlos Sainz conclusion after Ollie Bearman’s mega debut

Eddie Jordan says Carlos Sainz needs to secure his place on the 2025 grid soon as Oliver Bearman’s “spectacular” debut has shown the teams the youngsters can do it.

Although this year Formula 1 lined up for the pre-season photograph without a single new driver on the grid, a first in the sport’s history, it wasn’t long before one was in the mix.

Eddie Jordan’s warning to Carlos Sainz

Sainz was ruled out of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend on the Friday morning before final practice as the Spaniard had to undergo an operation due to appendicitis.

18-year-old Bearman was called up to replace him and had one just hour of running before qualifying, and yet still put the SF-24 up into 11th place having missed out on Q3 by 0.036s.

Despite pressure from the late-charging Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton, he raced his way to seventh place in the Grand Prix to earn widespread praise, the consensus being he will be a Formula 1 driver next season.

Great news for Bearman, not so much for Sainz as that’s one fewer race seat available for the Spaniard who is looking for a new job having been dropped by Ferrari in favour of Hamilton.

However, former team boss Jordan has warned the two-time Grand Prix winner that Bearman isn’t the only rookie deserving of a Formula 1 race seat.

“An absolute mega star in the making,” he said of Bearman on the Formula for Success podcast.

“But there are actually six or eight of these around, the young drivers in my opinion that aren’t getting the chance.

“And I’m sure that Carlos is sitting up in his bed, hopefully recovering at a very quick rate, and he’s saying to himself, ‘oh, my God, you know, I better get my seat sorted for ’25 because there’s lots of very good young kids who can stand in’.”

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Despite his praise for Bearman’s debut drive, Jordan says it did highlight one glaring issue with Formula 1: the cars “too easy to drive” these days.

That, though, doesn’t take away from Bearman’s “spectacular” performance.

“It also says to me that these cars are too easy to drive compared to what they used to be like,” Jordan continued.

“And that’s indicative of a driver like this, with the minimum of testing, at the last moment being told to put a set of overalls on and go and do a race and a track like Saudi.

“It was remarkable. I mean, to finish in front of Lewis, to finish in front of Lando was, for me, spectacular.”

Bearman will next head to Australia for round three of the Formula 2 championship where he’ll be back with Prema, unless of course, Sainz isn’t well enough to race.

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