Photo: Red Bull

Four more young drivers have been named as getting time in contemporary Formula 1 machinery at Yas Marina Circuit over the next week.

The first opportunity comes tomorrow in free practice one for the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, then next Tuesday is F1’s official young driver test.

For FP1, Alpine has called up reserve driver Paul Aron, while Red Bull Racing will run future Racing Bulls driver Arvid Lindblad and that team has called up its test driver Ayumu Iwasa.

It had long been anticipated Aron would be back in the cockpit this weekend, since Alpine had stated earlier this year that after being loaned out to rival Sauber for two practice outings he would then have a further three with them.

“I’m looking forward to being back behind the wheel of the A525 this weekend,” said the 21-year-old, who came third in Formula 2 last year and has been focused on reserve driver duties through 2025.

“The [FP1] performances in Monza and Mexico City were very positive for my personal development as a driver and I’m looking forward to building on that for a final time this year.”

Iwasa graduated from the Red Bull Junior Team for 2025, but into a test driver role after Isack Hadjar beat him to a race seat at Racing Bulls. He has driven in three practice sessions for the team over the past two years, while also racing in the top-tier Super Formula championship at home in Japan.

In his rookie season he came fifth, and won the title this year but was overlooked by Racing Bulls for 2026 in favour of Lindblad. He concludes his rookie F2 season this weekend, and is in contention to come fifth in the points.

Lindblad started his single-seater career in 2022, and his F1 promotion was announced two days ago. Last year he was fourth in the FIA Formula 3 Championship, and he began 2025 by winning the Formula Regional Oceania championship.

The latest additions from junior single-seaters to F1’s young driver test next week are Dino Beganovic and Kush Maini.

Beganovic is a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy, and will test with the team after two practice call-ups in 2025. He is another F2 rookie, and sits eighth in the standings with one win so far.

Far more experienced in F2 is third-year driver Maini, who has also won in 2025 but languishes down in 15th in the points table. He will test with Alpine, who he is a reserve driver for.

“I can’t wait to take part in the post-season Abu Dhabi test and to have my first proper experience of the A525,” said the 25-year-old.

“Yas Marina Circuit is one I know well from F2 and it will be impressive to see the level of performance F1 cars have around this track. I’m very appreciative of the team for trusting me in this role and will aim to do the best job possible with the programme the team gives me.”

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Photo: Red Bull

Red Bull Racing has announced it will hand Arvid Lindblad a second Formula 1 free practice outing at this weekend’s Mexico City Grand Prix.

The team handed Lindblad his F1 practice debut at the British Grand Prix in July, when he took over Yuki Tsunoda’s car. This time he will be in the Red Bull RB21 usually driven by Max Verstappen in FP1 on Friday afternoon.

Lindblad became a Red Bull Junior Team-supported driver at the start of 2021, a status he held through the last one-and-a-half years of his karting career before becoming a proper Red Bull junior when he switched to single-seaters in mid-2022.

The following year he came third in the Italian Formula 4 championship and won the Macau Grand Prix’s F4 support races, was in 2024 was 13th in Formula Regional Middle East then made another step up the ladder to FIA Formula 3 where he came fourth in the championship with four victories. Red Bull then immediately began preparing Lindblad for F1.

His first mileage in older machinery came in a 2024 demo on a stretch of an old IndyCar circuit, and he revealed to Formula Scout he drove in the testing of previous car (TPC) programme for an unnamed F1 team (believed to be be the Red Bull-owned Racing Bulls) in early 2025.

Lindblad made another TPC outing in June, driving at Imola with Red Bull Racing to prepare for his F1 practice debut.

Another key part of Red Bull’s plan was to provide further opportunies for Lindblad to secure FIA superlicence points, which led to him racing in FRegional Oceania at the start of 2025. He romped to the title with six victories.

• Read more: The trait more valuable than superlicence points that Lindblad now has

That put Lindblad above the 40-point tally he needed before even making his step up to Formula 2. But as Red Bull wanted the freedom to call him up to race in F1 mid-season, it lobbied the FIA to make an exemption for his superlicence to be granted before he reached the minimum age of 18 years old in August.

During a meeting of its World Motor Sport Council in June, that request was approved and special dispensation was made for the Anglo-Swede.

Lindblad has continued to impress in junior single-seaters, and currently sits seventh in the standings with two rounds left of his rookie F2 season. He won from pole in the Barcelona feature race, won the Jeddah sprint race and has two other podiums so far.

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Photo: Red Bull

Racing Bulls ran Ayumu Iwasa and Arvid Lindblad in a Formula 1 test last week, ahead of the latter making his free practice debut this weekend with Red Bull Racing.

The test took place at Imola on Monday (June 23) using the two-year-old AlphaTauri AT04 chassis, as part of the team’s testing of previous car (TPC) programme. Iwasa is Racing Bull’s test driver, and was in the cockpit during the afternoon.

Formula 2 racer and Red Bull junior Lindblad drove in the morning, and will get his first running in a contemporary F1 car this Friday (June 4) as he takes over Yuki Tsunoda’s car for free practice one of F1’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

His first mileage in older machinery came in a 2024 demo on a stretch of an old IndyCar circuit, and he revealed to Formula Scout that he also drove in a TPC test earlier this year but did not say which team it was with or where it took place.

“It was fun, driving an F1 car is always very special,” the 17-year-old said of his recent Imola outing. “It was nice to be back in the car, obviously very fast, a big step up from F2 in every way but it was really good.”

He will be working with Racing Bulls again once time allows since “there’s still some stuff to discuss and analyse for both me and Ayumu” from that test.

Arvid Lindblad claims to be “not ready” for a full-time drive in Formula 1 despite taking part in a behind-close-doors test with VCARB earlier in the week.

Looking ahead to his free practice outing, Lindblad called it “a very cool opportunity” while in conversation with Formula Scout.

“I kind of new very early on in the year that there were opportunities for that, when they requested thesuperlicense, I suspected there was something there.”

Since Lindblad is not yet at the minimum age usually required for an FIA superlicense, Red Bull put in a request to the FIA this February for an exemption to be made and it was approved during a meeting of its World Motor Sport Council this month.

“The opportunity to drive alongside Max [Verstappen] in the Red Bull as well will be extremely special and I can’t wait to have my first session on an official F1 race weekend at Silverstone as well, my home track, which makes it even more special,” the Anglo-Swede added.

The frontrunning F2 rookie also admitted that he does not feel prepared enough to step up to racing in F1 full-time in 2026, but would not be fazed by being called up for a cameo.

“I back myself that if the opportunity was to come to drive for one weekend, then I’d do a good job,” he said.

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Photo: Red Bull

Three junior single-seater talents have been driving Formula 1 cars recently, at Monza and in a city centre.

Red Bull junior Nikola Tsolov was on home soil in Bulgaria last weekend driving in a Red Bull showrun on the streets of its capital city Sofia.

He was at the wheel of 2011’s Red Bull RB7, which is too old for use in F1’s testing of previous car (TPC) programmes, but was still a landmark for the 18-year-old FIA Formula 3 driver since the demo (and the day he did on an airfield the day before to learn how to donut) marked his first ever running in an F1 car.

Aston Martin was at Monza last week with its two-year-old AMR23 car to do TPC running with its junior driver Jak Crawford and his F2 rival Cian Shields.

Crawford drove on Friday, following up previous TPC call-ups and driving in F1’s official young driver test at the end of 2024, and Shields drove on Saturday after previously testing with Aston Martin at Silverstone in April.

The 20-year-old Scot is not connected to the team, and is yet to comment on how his test opportunities have came about.

He started his single-seater career in 2022, coming 13th in GB3 with one win, then stepped up to the F3-level Euroformula for 2023. Four wins and six other podiums helped him become championship runner-up.

He moved across to FIA F3 in 2024, which was an unsuccessful endeavour as he came 30th in the standings with no points and a best finish of 14th place. At the end of the year he joined AIX Racing for two F2 rounds, and finished 11th on his second start, then has remained with the team this season. So far he has matched his best result and sits 20th in the standings.

Last month McLaren handed a long-awaited F1 test debut to its simulator driver Jake Hughes at Barcelona, where he drove its MCL60 car from 2023.

The 31-year-old Englishman was a race-winner in GP3, FIA European F3 and the FIA F3 Championship, and had three-top five finishes from 26 races in F2 from 2020 to ’22.

By then his focus was Formula E, joining Mercedes-EQ as test driver in 2020 and in 2021 becoming its full-time development driver, reserve driver for powertrain customer Venturi Racing and simulator driver for Mercedes-AMG’s F1 team.

Those roles continued into 2022, when Aston Martin also signed him as an F1 simulator driver. Hughes finally joined the FE grid in 2023, and across two seasons with McLaren picked up four poles but only one podium. He left its FE squad to join rival Maserati for the 2024-25 season, and has claimed his second podium with the team.

McLaren junior and Formula 4 driver Ella Lloyd has been called up by the team for FE’s rookie test in Berlin next month. She also drove for them in FE’s women’s test at Jarama last November.

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Photo: Red Bull

The FIA decided to grant an early superlicense to Formula 2 racer Arvid Lindblad during a meeting of its World Motor Sport Council today.

One of the requirements to qualify for an FIA superlicense, which is needed to race in Formula 1, is that a driver must be 18 or older. A rule change introduced in 2024, when Andrea Kimi Antonelli was being linked with an early F1 debut, means the governing body can now give special dispensation for certain drivers to receive their superlicence at 17.

Lindblad does not reach adulthood until August, and Red Bull put in a request to the FIA for an exemption to be made while the Anglo-Swede is 17. It means he could be considered as a stand-in at either of its two teams should Red Bull Racing driver Max Verstappen pick up a race ban this month.

Lindblad has already met the other requirement for a superlicense, which is to accumulate 40 superlicence points over the past three years, since making his single-seater debut in 2022.

• Read more: The trait more valuable than superlicence points that Lindblad now has

He has won in four different Formula 4 competitions, Formula Regional Middle East and the FIA Formula 3 Championship. This year he won the FRegional Oceania title and stepped up to Formula 2, where he is currently third in the standings with two victories and a pole. He got his first F1 mileage in a demo on a former IndyCar circuit last year.

During the World Motor Sport Counil meeting, the FIA also approved the proposal to award two superlicence points to the winner of the FIA F4 World Cup in Macau. That race was won by Lindblad in 2023 before it was granted World Cup status.

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Photo: Red Bull

Honda hopes that Ayumu Iwasa can utilise his maiden free practice outing with Red Bull Racing to boost his career, amid the team’s much publicised recent driver line-up complications.

The 23-year-old has driven in Formula 1 practice sessions before, but his two call-ups in 2024 were with Racing Bulls which is the the other Red Bull-owned team on the grid.

At the Bahrain Grand Prix this Friday, the Super Formula points leader will take over the car of reigning world champion Max Verstappen.

“We hope that Ayumu Iwasa will make the most of this valuable opportunity to drive the car that won the latest F1 Japanese Grand Prix, turning these 60 minutes into a stepping stone for the future,” said Honda Racing Corporation’s president Koji Watanabe.

Racing Bulls promoted Isack Hadjar from Formula 2 to partner fifth-year Yuki Tsunoda in its 2025 line-up, but after just two rounds Tsunoda went to Red Bull Racing in a swap with the underperforming Liam Lawson. Following round three, Hadjar is ahead of both in the standings and neither of the swapped drivers’ seats look totally secure for the rest of the season.

Iwasa said “I’m very looking forward to get some new experience in the car”, which has proven to be a competitive package but a difficult one to master for Lawson and Tsunoda so far.

Should Iwasa make a strong impression in practice, it could put both of those drivers under more pressure and boost his own F1 ambitions having become Racing Bulls’ official test driver shortly before the team revised its race driver line-up.

Iwasa was a Red Bull junior from 2021 to ’24, and has been a Honda junior since 2020. He won the French Formula 4 title that year, raced in the FIA Formula 3 Championship in 2021 then did two season in Formula 2 where he won five races, took seven other podiums and was fourth in the standings in his second campaign.

Having missed out on a Racing Bulls seat for 2024, Honda and Red Bull sent him to SF where he was competitive enough to win the title as a rookie at single-seaters’ top level but his season crumbled in the last event. Following that he drove for Racing Bulls in free practice and post-season testing in Abu Dhabi, but it was announced shortly after he would race in SF again in 2025.

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Photo: Red Bull

Red Bull has resolved its messy F1 driver situation for 2025, promoting Liam Lawson and Isack Hadjar, but are its chosen line-ups inspired or unprepared? Two Formula Scout writers have their say

An often dramatic and unpredictable Formula 1 silly season ahead of 2025 was finally concluded this week when Red Bull finalised the driver line-ups for its two teams.

Having waved goodbye to the underperforming Sergio Perez, it has handed Liam Lawson the daunting task of becoming team-mate to Max Verstappen at Red Bull Racing, opted to keep the more experienced Yuki Tsunoda at sister squad Racing Bulls for a fifth year and promoted Formula 2 runner-up Isack Hadjar to be his team-mate.

Here’s what Formula Scout’s writers made of the messy way the two outfits settled their 2025 line-ups, and which drivers they would have picked to put in both teams:

Talent deserves a chance, but not like this

Photo: John Cowpland / Toyota Gazoo Racing NZ

I feel sorry for Lawson. This is the dream drive he’s been aiming for since he was snapped up by Red Bull after his spectacular 2019 Toyota Racing Series campaign, but he goes in woefully underprepared for it with just 11 grand prix starts to his name.

Lawson has always had the raw talent to make it this far. The same confidence that enabled him to drive around the outside of a more experienced Marcus Armstrong in the wet on his TRS debut has been on show in his short F1 career so far, and is a vital ingredient to holding your own against the very best. But will that be enough to save him if he finds himself being dismantled by Verstappen in qualifying, as each of his predecessors have done?

The crazy thing is that Lawson could be going in with 34 F1 races under his belt had Red Bull not wasted its time trying to revive Daniel Ricciardo’s career in 2023, when it was abundantly clear from Lawson’s initial stand-in stint last year that he should have that drive. It could even be 46 races if Lawson had been chosen over Nyck de Vries at the start of that season.

In the end, he would spend hardly any of the the 12 months between his two F1 stints in a racing car at all, because Red Bull has continued to lack the sort of extensive old-car testing programmes that its rivals have.

Red Bull did so well to keep faith in Lawson’s talent and give him time on his way up the ladder, but that he doesn’t go into this ultimate chance better prepared is another failure of its modern driver development setup.

Lawson did however end up as the only viable solution to a sorry mess that’s wrapped up in the complex politics of the team – some it understandable and some of it less so.

This whole time there has been only one driver I would put in the Red Bull seat: Carlos Sainz Jr. That’s the level of well-rounded driver you need to be to go into that team and stand a chance of performing and delivering alongside Verstappen and it’s baffling that he wasn’t given more consideration, rather than being left to find refuge at Williams.

Much has been made of the fractions that broke out when a young Verstappen and Sainz were team-mates at Toro Rosso, now Racing Bulls. But there’s an easy solution to that for any team boss who has authority: ban both drivers’ motorsport-famous fathers from the garage and let their grown-up adult sons do their jobs in peace.

Tsunoda may well have ‘deserved’ the opportunity but discussion of his strengths and weaknesses is perhaps pointless. Having a Honda-linked driver in a Red Bull seat after their engine contract ends in 2025 is surely not desirable. Yes, Tsunoda could have been extracted from his contract, but he will always remain a product of Honda.

One reason why Japanese manufacturers support Japanese drivers is simply for national pride, and there could be no greater compliment to Honda than for them to be able to say: “A driver we found in Japan was deemed by Red Bull to be better than any driver they could find in the rest of the world.” And remember that it was Honda’s decision to withdraw from F1 (one it later reversed) that has forced Red Bull to build its own Ford-badged engines for 2026 – a source of uncertainty about the team’s future competitiveness that might even lead Verstappen to join Adrian Newey in defecting to Aston Martin.

Of course, if Red Bull had signed Sainz it would have left no room at Racing Bulls for Hadjar to step up to F1 – which is the best story in all of this.

Much to the credit of Helmut Marko and Guillaume Rocquelin, Hadjar has been a success story for the Red Bull Junior Team in its current form. As with Lawson, Hadjar has been nurtured from humble beginnings without much in the way of his own funding, and Red Bull kept faith in him even when things got tough. He was the lowest-placed of six Red Bull juniors in F2 in 2023 but the only one that remained with its backing in the series this year.

Placing him at Campos Racing didn’t look like a recipe for success on paper, but Hadjar has flourished as its team leader and has made great strides in his composure – a cause for doubt previously. That’s not to say he’s perfect, but drivers with his speed, confidence and fighting spirit are those that everyone surely wants to see in F1. And Red Bull has done the right thing to give him his chance to shine rather than bring someone in from outside, as much as Franco Colapinto deserves to be on the grid too.

Hadjar however would also have benefitted from more frequent private testing during this year, something it seems Red Bull will finally provide next year for Arvid Lindblad. Such a programme is crucial if the company wants to see a return on its investment in junior drivers and make sure they’re prepared for the opportunities that may continue to open up in their F1 line-ups in the coming years.

Peter Allen

Colapinto would have been clever catch

I am too young to have reported on Verstappen before he was in F1, but I worked as closely as you can get (without being a member of a racing team) with Lawson and Tsunoda on their way up the ladder. They’re both very mature, but like Sainz and Verstappen I do wonder if Red Bull felt they did not want the pair continuing as team-mates for 2025.

They got on very well with each other, both are fiercely competitive, and the team radio would definitely be loud during races if they stayed together. Outsiders could easily misconstrue Tsunoda’s in-car outbursts, and Lawson’s equivalents, as a fractured or unproductive relationship either on the side of the drivers or the team. But their personalities are like many other Japanese and Kiwi drivers I’ve worked with, and all parties involved have known each other for years.

When they were Euroformula team-mates in 2019, Lawson and Tsunoda truly did push each other’s boundaries, but that was a key part of the learning experience and the level of scrutiny placed on their on-track battles and working relationship off-track was less than had they been in the F1 support paddock. A teenaged me still did a lot of scrutinising, and some awful television commentary on their various clashes, near misses and great passes on each other and with rivals, and could see both were clearly future F1 stars. I think the questions some have about the pair now are ones Red Bull had answers for back then.

But the unknown was whether the opportunity for one to race in F1 would come at the expense of the other, and Red Bull’s relationship with Honda meant it was Tsunoda who was fast-tracked up the ladder. Thankfully, Lawson has now joined him on the F1 grid.

Based on the sucess of their 11 races as Racing Bulls team-mates so far, if I were team principal Laurent Mekies I would have desired line-up continuity for 2025. But if I were Red Bull Racing’s team principal Christian Horner, then promoting Lawson (despite being less prepared than Tsunoda) and making that decision early would have been my plan.

Photo: Fotospeedy

But since I’m neither, I would have placed Tsunoda alongside Verstappen for 2025 and pinched Williams’ F1-experienced junior Colapinto to partner Lawson at Racing Bulls. While Verstappen credits a champion mentality for a personality and on-track approach that has started to heckle rivals more and more, his father clearly had a big influence on that and at every stage of his racing career he has been the young driver in a team setting out to usurp older rivals through ‘raw talent’.

In the centrally-run 2014 Florida Winter Series, he was on the grid with the younger Lance Stroll but for both it was their first races in cars and Verstappen already knew how he measured up to him having crushed Stroll in karting the year before.

Therefore you have to go back to a Rotax Max Challenge Euro Trophy round in May 2013 for the last time when Verstappen had a younger team-mate (future IndyCar racer Zachary Claman DeMelo) and a different type of pressure to absorb.

Verstappen has spent enough time in the F1 paddock with Tsunoda to not be unsettled by him, even if Tsunoda could have proved to be a tougher team-mate to beat than most would anticipate. But he has a less established relationship with Lawson, certainly in a racing context, and if Red Bull Racing doesn’t make the car to beat in 2025 and leaves Verstappen looking elsewhere for when F1’s next technical era begins in 2026 then he will find it even more frustrating if Lawson handles a season being mired in the pack (and therefore being able to keep team spirits up) better than he does.

Therefore the easiest way for Red Bull to not lose Verstappen sooner than it wants is to put Tsunoda alongside him.

As for Racing Bulls, an inexperienced line-up is never ideal but Lawson already knows the car and team well and therefore the technical direction it will take in 2025, while Colapinto was superb in his nine races with Williams as the underperforming Logan Sargeant’s replacement but was never going to retain the seat for next season due to Sainz being signed. Red Bull would be/could have been very clever to tap into the fertile Argentinian fanbase and sponsorship market, and Colapinto’s proven abilities behind the wheel of an F1 car, by signing him up.

Ida Wood

The post Which drivers should Red Bull have put in its F1 cars for 2025? appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Red Bull Content Pool

Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner says his team plans to run Isack Hadjar in one of its cars in free practice at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

The season-ending event is the last opportunity for the team to meet its requirement of running a ‘rookie’ driver, someone who has less then three Formula 1 starts to their name and is in active possession of a free practice-only or full superlicence, in each of its cars for a practice session. Every team bar Red Bull has already done so with one car this year.

The brand’s sister team AlphaTauri completed its quota by running Hadjar – who sits 14th in the standings in his rookie Formula 2 season with one podium  so far – in FP1 at this weekend’s Mexico City Grand Prix.

His selection came under scrutiny since Appendix L of the FIA’s International Sporting Code specifies that for him to acquire a free practice-only superlicence AlphaTauri needed to show he had “driven at least 300km in a representative F1 car consistently at racing speeds” in testing. Instead, they distributed a quote from Hadjar saying he had never driven an F1 car.

It seemed to be of no issue as Hadjar took to the track on Friday and completed 25 laps, lapping 1.373 seconds slower than team-mate Daniel Ricciardo. After that session, Horner was asked about Red Bull’s FP1 plans for young drivers.

“We’re planning to do that in Abu Dhabi in the last standard race of the year at a circuit that we’ve got quite a bit of data on,” he said.

“So in the heat of the day, that first session in Abu Dhabi tends to have not a great deal of car set-up value so that’s when we’re going to elect to put both rookie drivers in our cars.”

“[Formula E champion] Jake Dennis is going to be driving one of the cars and Isack will be in the other car so it was good to see him put in a strong performance with Franz’s team today.”

AlphaTauri team principal Franz Tost was left impressed by Hadjar’s maiden F1 run.

“I don’t hope that this was his best day of the life, I hope that he wins races and championships,” he said.

“He did a good job, I must say. We were all impressed by him. He was calm when he went out, he was out with three different sets of tyres, the prototype tyre, the medium and the soft. And with all these different compounds, I must say that he really did a good job. His technical feedback was also quite good, because if you compare it to the data there is a very high correlation. And we are really impressed and I think that he will be soon in F1.”

Tost confirmed it was indeed Hadjar’s first F1 mileage: “I said to Isack, just enjoy driving your first time in a F1 car, don’t care about anything, and go for it. There is no pressure or nothing. “

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Photos: Red Bull Content Pool

AlphaTauri decided to sack Nyck de Vries today and replace him with Red Bull’s veteran reserve driver Daniel Ricciardo for the rest of 2023. For a team with a history of running young drivers, has it changed tactic?

Red Bull has two teams in Formula 1, and a driver development programme which is active in every tier of single-seater racing this year and even in karting too. But the last Red Bull Junior Team members to make their way to Red Bull Racing did so in 2019, and only for 12 races, and the B-team AlphaTauri (now branded as a ‘sister team’) has been running the same junior single-seater graduate for two-and-a-half years and they were the first direct RBJT graduate to the team since 2015.

Despite this lack of active progression from drivers in junior series into F1, AlphaTauri still has a reputation for being the team for providing such opportunities. That probably needs reviewing by this point.

And ignoring any ‘obligation’ that AlphaTauri may hold to be the end destination for Red Bull juniors to justify the continued existence of the RBJT, at the end of the day it is still a bad decision to put Ricciardo in a car with handling characteristics that are unlikely to suit him and also to do so now rather than later in the year.

Nyck de Vries only lasted 10 grands prix before getting sacked, the shortest career of any Toro Rosso/AlphaTauri driver, and he didn’t even make it to the summer break. While the very concept of the summer shutdown actually makes it harder for a new driver to integrate themself into a team if they join in that period, it is also a gap in the racing schedule not just for F1 but its support series too. Therefore it’s the best time to sit down and review the season up to that point, and the targets for the rest of the year and the next one too.

Had AlphaTauri postponed the decision to sack de Vries until then, or even to the end of the European leg of the F1 season at the start of September, rather than signing up Ricciardo for the rest of the season now, then they could have been in a better position with their options for 2024.

Yuki Tsunoda, the most recent RBJT graduate at AlphaTauri

Despite the team saying the contrary, Sergio Perez is under pressure to perform at Red Bull Racing right now and if an AlphaTauri driver was performing strongly enough then on previous form they would not hesitate in moving them into Perez’s seat. It had already been determined that de Vries was not doing enough to retain his place on the F1 grid, let alone be in consideration for a move to RBR, but Red Bull has now denied itself the opportunity to assess drivers other than Ricciardo.

A shootout test in old F1 cars or practice outings for seat candidates in the next few races would have left Red Bull in a better place to choose who should replace de Vries. It’s a mistake they made with de Vries in the first place, as he was signed long before he even tested an AlphaTauri car for the first time.

Ricciardo had not even driven a 2023 F1 car until today, doing a Pirelli tyre test at Silverstone that reportedly seriously impressed the team. Hours later, it had been agreed he would be ‘loaned’ to AlphaTauri.

It’s important to note that only a few teams were invited to that test, and AlphaTauri was not one of them. Therefore the trackside staff were not the crew that Ricciardo will be working with going forward. Had AlphaTauri been nominated to test Pirelli’s new tyres, they likely also would have wanted an experienced driver in their car for the sake of applicable feedback on how the prototype tyres differ to those used in recent seasons.

But at the same time, AlphaTauri would have been going into such a test knowing they wanted to replace de Vries, and with an opportunity to assess multiple drivers in their 2023 car and observe their working relationship with the team’s engineers and mechanics. The question is would Red Bull (and specially its motorsport advisor and RBJT chief Dr Helmut Marko) have picked the drivers or would have AlphaTauri’s (changing) management?

So, to the real point of this column: who are the options that have been ignored by going down the Ricciardo route?

The first is Red Bull junior Liam Lawson, who made free practice outings with AlphaTauri and RBR last year.

Liam Lawson

The 21-year-old Kiwi was snapped up by Red Bull a week after winning the Toyota Racing Series early in 2019, and placed in a dual F3 programme for the rest of the year.

He won four races in Euroformula and claimed two podiums in the FIA F3 Championship, then started 2020 by coming second in TRS before returning to FIA F3 and winning three times en route to fifth in the standings.

The lack of an F1 pipeline even at that point was shown by the fact Lawson then got placed in the GT3-spec DTM series for 2021 in addition to stepping up to Formula 2. He controversially was denied the DTM title in the final race, and won on his F2 debut but only got two more podiums after that and sank to ninth in the standings.

His sophomore F2 campaign resulted in four wins and third in the points, more than enough to earn the FIA superlicence required to race in F1. But Lawson was seventh in the standings at the point earlier in the year when de Vries was signed (with team-mate Yuki Tsunoda signed for 2023 before that), and Red Bull had set Lawson the target of becoming champion.

No room at the F1 inn, and no point staying in F2? Red Bull is used to that conundrum, and by the end of the year had secured Lawson a seat in Super Formula with Team Mugen.

Racing in a top-level single-seater series against professional and very experienced drivers, with a more consistent formbook too, has shown how talented Lawson is.

He qualified third on his debut at Fuji Speedway, and went on to take victory with fastest lap, and at Autopolis he won from the front row. He has finished the other three races in the top five, and sits second in the standings with four races to go.

The next two don’t clash with F1, while the double-header Suzuka finale is on the same weekend as the Mexico City Grand Prix. That means Lawson won’t be free to be RBR’s reserve driver in Mexico, or alternatively it could have meant Lawson would have only had to miss one weekend of SF to race for AlphaTauri in F1.

Lawson in Super Formula

It would have been disrespectful to break Lawson’s contract with Mugen so he could race in F1 that weekend, which has more sway than you would think in these kinds of decisions.

When Red Bull chose to put their junior Pierre Gasly in a Toro Rosso seat mid-season in 2017, he was fighting for the SF title and they had to send him back to Japan to contest the finale which clashed with the United States Grand Prix.

Talking of SF-experienced racers, the other candidate to replace de Vries that Red Bull would have been well-placed to take more patience on was Alex Palou.

The 26-year-old Spaniard has no previous relationship with Red Bull, but it’s known that he has caught Marko’s eye this year while he romps towards a second IndyCar title. Palou won in Euroformula, GP3, Japanese F3 and Formula V8 3.5 before reaching the top level of single-seaters in SF in 2019.

While Mugen rotated through several Red Bull juniors that season, Palou shone with Nakajima Racing and claimed a win, three poles and two fastest laps en route to third in the standings. Japanese connections then helped him move to IndyCar for 2020, and he was on the podium by just his third race.

Chip Ganassi Racing signed Palou for 2021, and he rewarded their faith by winning three races and the title. His form dipped last year as he pursued a move to McLaren SP, which ultimately did not go ahead, but he won the season finale and this year he has won four races out of nine and only once finished outside of the top five.

However Palou is still pushing for a move to McLaren, and not just to its IndyCar team. His attention now is on a F1 move for 2024 and the whole IndyCar driver market is in a state of gridlock until it is settled on whether Palou will leave Ganassi.

Marko’s interest in Palou stemmed, aside from his stunning form this year, by the fact the IndyCar season concludes in September and therefore he would technically be free for the last eight rounds of the F1 season.

Photo: IndyCar

The courting that took place between McLaren and Palou did lead to a deal where he gets to test their old F1 cars, so he’s building useful experience.

Red Bull could have benefitted from another team’s work with a driver, particularly by waiting for not only Palou’s season to conclude but for him to get even more F1 test mileage.

But Red Bull’s decision means Palou’s potential F1 future lies solely in McLaren’s hands, unless AlphaTauri do snap him up for 2024 before the F1 season is done, and there is seemingly no way McLaren can actually provide Palou with an F1 seat.

So if he stays in IndyCar next year, then it will be just as impactful on if he remains with Ganassi or moves to McLaren.

Ganassi only has one driver signed for next season, with their Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericssion also potentially leaving, and there are several young drivers interested in joining including the team’s junior Kyffin Simpson who is racing in the Indy Nxt support series.

David Malukas has eyes on joining a top team, and F2 graduate Marcus Armstrong wants a full-time seat for 2024 as he has been a part-time Ganassi driver this year. They need to know if to look elsewhere if Palou is staying, such as the third McLaren entry that Palou is earmarked for.

However if Ganassi lose Palou and Ericsson, they may look to the other top teams to try to buy one of their drivers out of contract, and then that potentially opens up an attractive seat at say Andretti Autosport or Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.

There could be as many as four Indy Nxt graduates headed to IndyCar next year, while F1’s new line-ups may not include any junior single-seater graduates.

The post Red Bull has reduced its future options with its de Vries replacement appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Red Bull Content Pool

The third edition of the Virtual Le Mans 24 Hours is taking place next weekend, and will feature 14 junior single-seater racers.

During the first global lockdown period of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Le Mans 24 Hours organiser ACO approved and helped run the inaugural edition of the Esports race, which had a 50-car entry list and was won by Rebellion Williams.

The official Le Mans Virtual Series has run since, and the final round of the 2021-22 season was the 24-hour race. One of the drivers of the winning car, entered by crack Esports squad Team Redline, was Felipe Drugovich.

Since then he has won the Formula 2 title and become Aston Martin’s first ever Formula 1 junior, and he is back to defend his victory in one of Redline’s LMP2 cars.

In the sister car is GB3 champion and Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Award winner Luke Browning, who will be sharing driving duties with three other drivers including reigning F1 world champion Max Verstappen.

Vanwall, a former F1 manufacturer whose name has recently been revived by the ByKolles team to compete in sportscars, has FIA Formula 3 stars Franco Colapinto and Jonny Edgar in its two cars, while Alpine is fielding its two juniors Victor Martins and Olli Caldwell in the same entry.

Panis Racing has Formula Regional race-winner Pierre-Louis Chovet, GR eSports has signed Team USA scholar Andre Castro and Fordzilla has brought in British Formula 4 racer Georgi Dimitrov.

There are more junior stars in the GTE class, with Super Formula-bound FRegional Americas champion Raoul Hyman driving for Proton Coanda Esports in a virtual Porsche 911 RSR.

Red Bull Racing will also be using that car for its own team, and among the drivers is its junior Ayumu Iwasa who is currently racing in F2.

For the second year running, German automotive parts company Mahle is fielding its own Esports team and once again has W Series star Beitske Visser in its BMW M8, while SF Velas and Romain Grosjean’s R8G team are both using Ferrari 488s and have hired F2-bound Ferrari junior Ollie Bearman and FIA F3 race-winner Alexander Smolyar respectively.

The post Alpine, Ferrari and Red Bull enter their F1 juniors into Virtual Le Mans appeared first on Formula Scout.