RacingArvid Lindblad came out of Formula 1’s unexpected April break still trying to process how fast his rookie season has started. The 18-year-old Racing Bulls driver has already scored on debut in Melbourne, reached Q3 twice, and now heads to Miami with Alan Permane’s team using the gap to prepare a delayed upgrade package for the VCARB 03.
Lindblad said during the break that the opening three weekends had gone beyond what he expected. Speaking to selected media including F1.com in an April gap media sit-down, Lindblad said: “Obviously, coming in as a rookie, I was mainly focused on myself. I didn’t have that much experience with the previous cars, but these cars are very different to what I was used to. So, for me, expectations-wise, I didn’t really come in with many, I was just trying to focus on myself and do the best I could.” In the same media sit-down, he added: “I’ve been really happy with how the first couple of races have gone. It’s definitely been better than I could have hoped for.”
That feeling started in Melbourne. On his Albert Park debut, Lindblad reached Q3, qualified ninth and finished eighth for Racing Bulls. Speaking to media about that weekend, Lindblad called it “very special” and said: “Q3 at my first attempt, running P3 at some point on Lap 1, and scoring points, it was a very special weekend, and I couldn’t even have dreamed of it.” According to the season summary, that result made him the third-youngest points scorer in F1 history and Britain’s youngest points scorer.
The bigger picture has encouraged both driver and team, even if Racing Bulls does not claim to have solved the midfield on raw pace. Lindblad said in the team’s first-three-races assessment that “the team has done a good job on the operational side, and we’ve executed the basics well, which has helped us score points as a team.” In the same assessment, he said the midfield is “incredibly tight,” and that it is still too early to be definite about where teams stand because “everything is changing week by week.”
Lawson gave a similar read. In the team’s first-three-races assessment, the Racing Bulls driver said: “We’ve been able to score in every race this year,” while stressing that the next target is to find more performance in the car.
Miami now becomes the next real test because the break gave Racing Bulls time to rework its development schedule. Looking ahead to Miami, Permane, Racing Bulls team principal, said the team had a “decent upgrade planned for Bahrain” that will now arrive in Florida, with “another planned for Montreal” creating what he described as a “quick double upgrade.” In the same comments, Permane said the team had also used the gap for “some unplanned work on the chassis” and that the upgrades should “hopefully move us closer to the top of the midfield.”
The break also gave Racing Bulls time to review the car and its new power unit together. Looking ahead to Miami, Permane said there would “likely be some changes in how we operate the PU for Miami and beyond,” adding that the team was using the time “to extract the maximum performance from both the PU and the chassis.”
Lindblad knows that puts extra focus on what happens next. In Racing Bulls’ assessment of the break and early season, he said: “The big thing for all of us will be the changes in Miami and being able to adapt to them.” He also said his own target remains simple: keep learning, keep improving, and build on a start that, by his own account, still has not fully sunk in. Speaking to BBC Newsbeat during the break, Lindblad said: “I don't think it's fully sunk in. This is something I've been working towards my whole life. So the fact it's come true is extremely special, extremely cool.”