Racing
© Lukas Raich
McLaren has confirmed that reigning Formula 2 champion Leonardo Fornaroli will make his official Formula 1 debut in Free Practice 1 at the Spanish Grand Prix, taking over Lando Norris’s MCL40 for the opening session in Barcelona.
The 21-year-old Italian will run car number 67 as he steps into his first official F1 session, a notable milestone in a rise that has quickly taken him from McLaren’s driver development programme into the team’s reserve role after joining the Woking squad last December.
McLaren has built Fornaroli up to this opportunity through a Testing of Previous Cars programme, with the team saying he has already completed multiple runs in older machinery, including work at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. That preparation is now carrying over into a race weekend session that will count directly toward McLaren’s Friday workload.
In a McLaren statement, Leonardo Fornaroli said: “I’m looking forward to getting to drive the MCL40 this weekend in Spain for Free Practice 1.” He said the outing was “a great opportunity to support the team with their preparations and work through the planned Friday programme.”
Fornaroli also described the session as “a very special milestone for me personally, as it will be my first official Formula 1 session,” adding that it is “something I’ve worked towards for a long time, and I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to take this next step with McLaren Racing.”
He said the experience gained through his TPC programme had been “so valuable for my development and overall learning of driving a Formula 1 car,” and thanked “Zak, Andrea and Alessandro for their continued support.” For McLaren, the Barcelona session gives the team a chance to fold that test work into a live grand prix weekend while giving one of its key young drivers his first official F1 appearance.