Untelevised F1 team radio message reveals clue to next explosive teammate rivalry
Oliver Bearman (Haas VF-25) in action at the 2025 Mexican Grand Prix
Oliver Bearman has outqualified Haas teammate Esteban Ocon at each of the last five races, as well as equalling the team’s best-ever result by finishing fourth at last weekend’s Mexican Grand Prix.
Ocon’s reaction at the previous round in the United States offered a hint over where his mind is heading as Bearman establishes the upper hand…
Oliver Bearman vs Esteban Ocon the next big F1 teammate rivalry?
A version of this article originally appeared in PlanetF1.com’s conclusions from the 2025 Mexican Grand Prix
How does a driver know when he has the edge over Esteban Ocon?
When Esteban starts dropping little hints, initially here and there, that dark forces are at work against him inside the team.
It happens everywhere he goes at some point and is partly why Alpine decided to release him ahead of the final race of last season after weeks of Ocon dropping hints that his car was in some way inferior to that of Pierre Gasly.
Oliver Bearman vs Esteban Ocon: Haas head-to-head scores for F1 2025
👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates
👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates
So it was interesting to hear to his reaction over team radio after the chequered flag at the United States Grand Prix last month.
Informed by his race engineer that he only managed P15 in Austin on a day Oliver Bearman finished ninth in the same car, Ocon replied: “What are you doing to me, guys, honestly?”
His delivery – in what, it should be stressed, was a very short snippet of team radio – seemed relaxed enough.
But give it a few more weeks.
As sure as night follows day, if the current trend continues – Mexico last weekend marked the fifth weekend in succession that Bearman has outqualified Ocon, with the latter falling in Q3 three times – Esteban’s mask will slip a little bit more with each passing race.
It is to Bearman’s great credit that he has already poked and prodded Ocon, one of the more underrated drivers on the current grid, into that position.
His success in making his established and experienced teammate look positively average is not so different to what Gabriel Bortoleto, among the outstanding rookies of this season, has achieved against Nico Hulkenberg at Sauber.
Bearman won’t be in the running for any of those Rookie of the Year awards.
His poor disciplinary record – 10 penalty points, two away from a race ban, up until Brazil – has put paid to that.
As has his terrible error of crashing in the pit lane under red flags at Silverstone, that single incident responsible for four of those points.
Yet his overall potential, it is increasingly clear, is as high as any of this year’s debutants.
More on Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon from PlanetF1.com
Watch Bearman drive and you are transported back five years to the sight of an emerging George Russell in the Williams: always aggressive, always charging hard, not always tidy but very often effective.
Bearman’s reactive technique – reacting to whatever the car is doing at any given time rather than manipulating it with his inputs – sees him live on his reflexes on a very fine line and is what, like George, makes him prone to making mistakes.
Yet, as with Russell, it is also what makes him so irresistible over the course of a single lap.
Already, even before the end of his first full season, Ocon is struggling to contain Bearman.
Soon enough, as Oliver’s data banks expand ever more with experience, he won’t be able to live with him.
Read next: Why Lewis Hamilton’s documents are a red flag for Ferrari