Eighteen-year-old Arvid Lindblad has expressed doubts about being entirely ready for his Formula 1 debut with Racing Bulls in 2026, despite positive feedback from team officials. He completed his first laps in the new car during a private shakedown in Barcelona. The session highlighted both his composure and the challenges of the upcoming regulations.
Arvid Lindblad, who joined Red Bull's junior programme in 2021 and finished sixth in Formula 2 last year, began his preparation for the 2026 F1 season with a private shakedown at Barcelona on Wednesday. Driving the VCARB 03, the 18-year-old British driver completed at least 42 laps, though a red flag interrupted the session due to a presumed technical issue unrelated to his performance.
Speaking to F1 TV, Lindblad reflected on his readiness: “I don't know. I mean, I've got a lot to learn. If I'm entirely ready, I don't know. It's not really something I think about. I'm more thinking about how can I try to get more ready. What's the things that can help me learn to be in as best position as possible when we get to Melbourne. So, I'm just focused on working hard with the team on the sim here at the track with the engineers, just trying to learn as much as I can, be a bit of a sponge on that side. And yeah, then we'll see.”
Lindblad's rookie year aligns with major F1 regulatory changes, including new chassis and power unit designs, ahead of the season opener in Australia from March 6-8. Racing Bulls, the Italian team, and its sister outfit Red Bull will use an in-house power unit developed with Ford for the first time since their F1 entries in 2006 and 2005, respectively.
Technical officer Tim Goss praised Lindblad's approach: “He’s really calm, really professional - feedback is really, really straightforward. For someone so young, it's really, really impressive and his session in the car has really just been about getting to grips with this breed of car. They're very, very different, not just the general handling of the car but the way you've just got to manage the energy and the energy management and he's just been really, really cool, calm, professional. As we're getting to the grips with the balance of the car, his feedback has just been really simple, really clear, so really, really impressed with him.”
Goss also commended the power unit's reliability, noting nearly 200 laps completed on its debut day: “It's been a really, really impressive job by Red Bull-Ford Powertrains. To come as a complete newcomer to Formula 1 and on your very first day, then to put nearly 200 laps under your belt, it's easy to take this level of reliability for granted, but it can't be underestimated what they've achieved. The driveability is fantastic. The difficulty that ourselves and probably all the other teams are coming to grips with is just how the energy management changes a little bit from lap to lap, from corner to corner, and just trying to understand how best to tune all of that and for the drivers just to get used to it, really.”
Despite expectations of initial struggles against established engines like Mercedes, the early testing has shown promising stability for the Red Bull-Ford unit.
