Arvid Lindblad’s eyes mild up. The 18-year-old who’s about to turn into Britain’s youngest ever Components 1 driver is sitting on a seaside in Bahrain, a Gulf mist obscuring the still-rising solar, and he is pondering a query.
He is been well mannered however cautious thus far. A five-minute drive from the circuit the place he and his Racing Bulls group are finishing their preparations for his grand prix debut in Australia originally of March. On the cusp of attaining his lifetime’s dream, understandably he needs to verify he doesn’t say something he may remorse.
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However when he is requested what has been the perfect factor that is occurred to him since he turned an F1 driver, the enjoyment inside him bubbles to the floor, and he cannot resist a bit of smile.
“Since changing into a Components 1 driver… the perfect factor was simply changing into a Components 1 driver,” he says.
He realized about Pink Bull’s determination to advertise him to their second group eventually 12 months’s Qatar Grand Prix, the place he was competing within the penultimate spherical of the Components 2 championship.
The information was damaged by Pink Bull’s former motorsport adviser Helmut Marko, the veteran former F1 driver who had taken Lindblad into the corporate’s driver programme on the age of 13 as a promising go-karter.
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“That is one thing I have been doing with my dad,” Lindblad says. “I acquired the information in Qatar once I was with him, so clearly that was a really particular second to share collectively.”
Does he nonetheless need to pinch himself to verify it is actual? Lindblad pauses. “Slightly bit,” he says.
Formed by UK, Indian and Swedish heritage
Lindblad’s commencement to F1 this 12 months is breaking new floor for the game.
He’s one in every of 5 British F1 drivers on the grid this 12 months – six should you rely Alex Albon, who was born and raised within the UK, however races underneath the Thai flag. He is additionally the primary Briton with Indian heritage to race on the highest degree of the game.
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His father, Stefan, is Swedish. His mom, Anita, is of Indian descent. The partition of India in 1947 performed a big function within the household’s historical past.
“My Nani, my grandmother, is Sikh, grandfather’s Hindu,” Lindblad says. “And once they have been 5, they have been concerned within the partition.
“They have been within the a part of Punjab that’s now Pakistan, and so they needed to go away. They got here from fairly well-off backgrounds, however then they misplaced all the things. So then they needed to work very exhausting their entire life to recreate a life for themselves. Then they moved to the UK of their late 20s, early 30s, as docs.”
His household background is, he acknowledges, “fairly a uncommon mixture, however I am very pleased with my heritage. All three components have actually formed me to who I’m in the present day”.
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He provides: “I have been very uncovered to all three. Regardless that my grandparents moved to the UK once they had my mum, they’re nonetheless very conventional Indians. I have been uncovered to quite a lot of their cultures and rituals, the meals, the prayer, all that type of stuff, from an early age, in addition to the Swedish. It is actually formed who I’m in the present day.”
Arvid Lindblad pictured together with his dad, Stefan, and his mum, Anita, on the Autosport Awards in 2023 [Getty Images]
Language expertise haven’t handed down the generations as successfully as tradition, although.
“I am not the perfect at languages, to be sincere. I can communicate a bit of little bit of Swedish and some phrases of Hindi, but it surely’s not nice,” Lindblad says.
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“I could not do an interview in one other language, so it is one thing I am nonetheless working in direction of. I believe it will be significant and it is also a component of respect, however I’ve acquired some work to do.”
The curiosity in motorsport got here from his father’s facet of the household.
“My grandfather is an enormous motorsports fan,” Lindblad says. “He’ll watch something with wheels and an engine. He did a bit of little bit of motocross with my dad when he was youthful. Sadly, they could not do it for very lengthy, however he handed that keenness all the way down to my dad, who handed it on to me.
“Once I was three, my dad acquired me a motocross bike. To be sincere, it did not final very lengthy. It was a bit an excessive amount of for my mum to take a seat a bit of three-year-old on a motocross bike. In order that died out fairly rapidly.
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“However then once I was 5 I went karting for the primary time and beloved it from the start.
“However I would say a giant turning level for me that I keep in mind very properly was once I was about 4. My dad was sitting on the couch and had the F1 on and I got here and sat down subsequent to him and was watching the race and asking him, ‘Is it attainable to be there? Might I? How does it work?’
“That was actually the second once I noticed the vehicles and needed to be there someday and that fuelled the beginning of the journey.”
He says he has been fixated on this second from a really early age.
“From the start I needed to be in F1 and I believed for some motive that I may,” he says. “I do not know if that was false hope or what, however from 5 I believed I could possibly be in F1, and that was at all times what I used to be working in direction of.”
Racing Bulls completed sixth within the 2025 constructors’ championship [PA Media]
Lindblad was born and grew up in well-to-do Virginia Water in Surrey, and is the primary to acknowledge that he has been helped on his approach by the relative consolation of his background.
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“I am very lucky to have the ability to do racing, as a result of as everybody is aware of it isn’t probably the most accessible sport to everybody,” he says.
“I’ve already touched on a bit my mum’s facet, that they have been very hard-working and so they needed to actually battle for what they’d.
“My grandmother retired as a health care provider at 82, and my mum could be very comparable. Properly, she’s not 82, however she has that very comparable work ethic. And my dad much more so.
“He got here from a small village in Sweden, the place generally my grandparents struggled to place three meals on the desk.
“He had his first job from when he was 11, attempting to simply do something he may to get any pocket cash. He funded himself via college and he is labored actually exhausting his entire life, and it is a large motive why I am ready to do that and be right here in the present day.
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“So I am extraordinarily grateful and grateful for that. However much more so I believe I am very fortunate to come back from a household the place exhausting work, humility and all of these values are essential. That is actually one thing I attempt to present and act of as properly.”
His development to F1 has been fast. After seven years in karts, profitable quite a few worldwide championships, he made his car-racing debut in 2022 aged solely 15, and has been fast-tracked by Marko via F4, F3 and F2 12 months by 12 months.
Lindblad celebrates a Components 3 dash race victory in Bahrain in 2024 [Getty Images]
We’re speaking on the plush lodge Racing Bulls have picked as their base for the 2 pre-season assessments in Bahrain, which adopted a ‘shakedown’ in Spain. It isn’t long gone 8am, and his subsequent appointment is an engineering assembly, earlier than going out on observe later within the day.
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Requested if he feels prepared for the massive time in F1, he says: “Yeah, I believe so. Clearly, it is a large step from F2, particularly this 12 months. There’s regulation adjustments and all the things could be very totally different.
“However I have been working actually exhausting with the group on the sim (simulator) on the manufacturing unit, clearly additionally attempting to utilise these three assessments that we’ve.
“That is a giant profit for me this 12 months. Usually, there’s just one, whereas this 12 months there’s three. So that basically helps me to rise up to hurry. I am actually attempting to utilise these assessments, and I am trying ahead to getting on observe in Melbourne.”
Racing Bulls group principal Alan Permane, who has labored with a mess of prime drivers, together with Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso, has been stuffed with reward thus far.
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“He is carried out a unbelievable job,” Permane says. “Individuals usually ask me, ‘What do you search for? What do you want in a younger driver?’ And naturally, the very first thing you want is for them to be fast. We’re very comfy with that, we all know he is acquired the pace.
“But additionally on prime of that, he is bringing a lot of inquisitiveness, he is asking many questions, his debriefs are nice, he is doing all the things we ask of him in the intervening time.”
F1 is a brutal enterprise, with little sentiment. Drivers both obtain or they’re out. And nowhere is extra ruthless than Pink Bull.
You may count on Lindblad to be feeling a bit of stress combined in with the apparent pleasure. However he says not.
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“I would not actually say stress,” he says. “If I am being sincere, that is what I’ve labored in direction of my entire life.
“So I am excited to be right here, and all I am actually fascinated with in the intervening time is attempting to work with the group, attempting to grasp the vehicles to get the perfect efficiency I can, attempting to extract probably the most out of the package deal from the start.”
