Oliver Bearman: Haas driver avoids serious injury after limping away from heavy Japanese GP crash
Oliver Bearman crashed out of the Japanese Grand Prix after losing control of his Haas at Spoon Curve; Bearman required help from marshals as he limped away from the incident; an X-ray revealed that the 20-year-old Brit had not suffered any fractures
Sunday 29 March 2026 16:15, UK
Oliver Bearman avoided serious injury despite having limped away from his Haas following a heavy crash during the Japanese Grand Prix.
Bearman was chasing Alpine's Franco Colapinto for 17th place on lap 21 when he lost control, veering off onto the grass and then spinning into the barrier at Spoon Curve at high speed.
The 20-year-old was helped by marshals as he needed to sit down after getting out of the car, but an X-ray at the track's medical centre revealed that the Brit had not suffered any fractures.
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Haas confirmed during the race that Bearman had been cleared at the track's medical centre, where x-rays confirmed he had not suffered any fractures.
Speaking later, Bearman said: "Everything's good, first of all. I'm absolutely fine. It was a scary moment that happened out there but everything's ok, which is the main thing.
"The car is a bit worse for wear, but we have a month now to reset and come back. I can only apologise from the bottom of my heart to the team for that because it's a lot of work for them."
The nature of the incident, which was caused by there being a significant difference in speed between the two cars as a result of their contrasting states of energy deployment, prompted the FIA to announce after the race that it would hold meetings to assess the sport's new regulations for 2026 in light of the crash.
Bearman explained: "It was a massive overspeed, 50kph, which is a real… it's a part of these new regulations that I guess we have to get used to, but also I felt like I wasn't really given much space given the huge excess speed that I was carrying.
"It's something that we spoke about on Friday with the other drivers and the stewards, that we need to be a bit more lenient, a bit more prepared because of these huge deltas in speed.
"I think we've, as a group, warned the FIA what can happen, and this has been a really unfortunate result of a massive delta speed that we've never seen before in F1 until these new regulations."
The incident triggered a race-altering Safety Car, which enabled eventual winner Kimi Antonelli to take the lead by leapfrogging Oscar Piastri and George Russell.
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