Ollie Bearman became the 33rd driver to make their world championship debut in Ferrari machinery at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix earlier this month. The 18-year-old Briton impressed on his way to seventh, but how does his performance stack up to those of his predecessors?
For this list, we’ve excluded the earliest Ferrari ‘rookies’, such as Alberto Ascari at the 1950 Monaco GP (where he finished second), because they were already GP drivers who were active prior to the inauguration of the world championship.
10 ANDREA DE ADAMICH
1968 SOUTH AFRICAN GP
Started 7th | Result Retired
The bespectacled 26-year-old from Trieste had won the 1966 European Touring Car title with Alfa Romeo and made his F1 debut for Ferrari in the non-championship 1967 Spanish GP before heading to Kyalami for his first points-paying grand prix on New Year’s Day in 1968.
The new boy was part of a three-car team from Maranello, and was assigned a 312 that was 36lb heavier than the machines prepped for Chris Amon and the exciting young Jacky Ickx. The heat in practice forced teams into some on-the-spot solutions, with Autosport describing the misfiring Ferraris as having “flexible piping rigged up to direct cooling air on the fuel metering pumps, and the Ferrari mechanics had made an outrigger oil cooler on the left hand side of Ickx’s car”. The Belgian tried all three cars in practice, but neither he nor Amon could match the hugely impressive de Adamich, who qualified seventh, 0.2 seconds quicker than eighth-placed Amon and 1.3s clear of Ickx in 11th.
The race was less to write home about. Ludovico Scarfiotti had just crashed his Cooper-Maserati and sustained burns from the escaping oil and water when de Adamich lost control on the oil at Clubhouse Bend and hit the barriers, damaging his suspension and forcing him to walk back to the pits.
De Adamich never drove another world championship GP for Ferrari, and in fact his next start was not until 1970
