Who is F3 driver Arvid Lindblad?
F1 News
Arvid Lindblad took victory again in Formula 3 in Spain, his second of the season but his first in a feature race. But who is the British 16-year-old?
Who is Britain's next F1 prospect?
Arvid Lindblad was born on August 8th, 2007 making him the youngest driver on the F3 grid. He started his racing career in karts in 2015 and went on to be WSK Super Master Series Champion in OKJ and winner of the WSK Euro Series and WSK Final Cup in OK class before moving up to single-seaters.
He made his Italian F4 debut in 2022 before moving to PREMA Racing in 2023 for a full campaign. He finished third in last year’s standings and was fourth in the Euro 4 Championship. He was also the victor in the Macau F4 World Cup race at the end of 2023.
This earned him a Formula 3 drive for the 2024 season, sticking with the PREMA squad who have taken many drivers through the junior categories to F1 including Charles Leclerc, Mick Schumacher and Guanyu Zhou. Lindblad is backed by the Red Bull junior programme and runs their livery on his car, helmet and race suit. Lindblad joined the Red Bull programme at just 13 years old when he was called by Helmut Marko whilst having breakfast with his father. "I remember very vividly I was in the hotel having breakfast with my dad two weeks before the World Championship and his phone rang and it was [Red Bull team director] Dr [Helmut] Marko asking to have a sit-down. “And then we met him on the Sunday morning of the Portuguese Grand Prix, and he said he wanted me to join the [Red Bull junior] programme."
He is currently fourth in the Formula 3 standings, after winning the Bahrain Sprint race comfortably. He finished the Bahrain feature race 8th, before picking up nine points in Melbourne, finishing 2nd in the sprint race. A difficult weekend in Imola saw him finish 8th in the sprint and 7th in the feature. In Monaco, he just missed out on the feature podium, finishing fourth. He finished the Spain sprint race in 9th, before returning to the top step of the podium in the feature race.
Who else races under a British flag in the junior categories?
Lindblad is one of many British drivers making his way through Formula 1's feeder series. Williams-backed driver Luke Browning, Cian Shields, Callum Voisin and Joesph Loake are the other Brits alongside Lindblad on the F3 grid. Zak O'Sullivan, Ollie Bearman and Taylor Barnard are the British representatives on the Formula 2 grid.