Arvid Lindblad, who will make his F1 debut in 2026 with Racing Bulls, has praised Red Bull\u2019s Motorsport Advisor Helmut Marko for supporting him through his junior career ahead of his departure from the team.<\/p>\n
The Austrian played a crucial role in managing the Red Bull<\/a> Junior Programme, overseeing the development of young drivers from Racing Bulls to the senior team, including World Champions like Max Verstappen<\/a> and Sebastian Vettel.<\/p>\n With Isack Hadjar<\/a> set to replace Yuki Tsunoda<\/a> at the Milton Keynes outfit next season, the 18-year-old Lindblad will become the final driver to have been advised by Marko<\/a> and promoted to a seat after finishing sixth in Formula 2 in 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s quite a big thing,\u201d the rookie said of his ties with Marko. \u201cI mean, I’ve worked very closely with them the last couple years, Rocky [Guillaume Rocquelin, Head of the Red Bull Driver Academy] and Dr Marko and the whole team. I\u2019m extremely grateful for their support and all the work we’ve done, but especially with Dr Marko.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s not been the easiest year for me. I’m not happy with how it’s gone, but he believed in me when others didn’t, and I’m very grateful for that.<\/p>\n \u201cI find it funny when a lot of people say how difficult it can be to work with him, their stories of how they struggled to work with Dr Marko, how he’s very difficult and people are scared of him. For me, it’s always been the opposite. I’ve always had a very good relationship with him.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are certain things he wants to see, and I mean, I can\u2019t talk for others and their experience, but I\u2019ve always had a very good relationship with him, and he\u2019s helped my career massively. The fact that he believed in me when others didn’t, I’m very grateful towards him, because this opportunity wouldn’t have come without him.<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t really like excuses and when people talk rubbish, and he doesn’t do that \u2013 he just says the truth, and I like to do the same. I think on that side, it’s helped me. It’s helped me to learn the best way, helped me progress the fastest, because he just says the truth and the way things have been. And I appreciate that honesty as well, because there are a lot of people in motorsport who want you to tell them what they want to hear.\u201d<\/p>\n As the sole rookie on next season\u2019s grid, Lindblad will have plenty to learn, but Red Bull have supported his quick progression through the junior formulas \u2013 and he outlined the additional help they have provided through offering Free Practice opportunities and the chance to drive previous iterations of their cars.<\/p>\n Most recently, he featured in the annual post-season test<\/a> in Abu Dhabi, in which both regular drivers and rookies take part. He completed an impressive 139 laps and ended the day just 0.014s slower than his Racing Bulls team mate Liam Lawson<\/a>.<\/p>\n Lindblad explained: \u201cI’ve been doing a lot on the sim with [Red Bull]. I have been for a while now, already started a bit last year, and then obviously, I’ve been doing some of the FP1s, a little bit of TPC [Testing of Previous Cars] running. So I’ve been doing a lot of work with Red Bull.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that it isn\u2019t just F2 that has helped the decision [to choose me] for next year. I\u2019ve been working closely with [Red Bull] for a long time. It\u2019s my fifth year on the programme, so I have a very close relationship with all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arvid Lindblad, who will make his F1 debut in 2026 with Racing Bulls, has praised Red Bull\u2019s Motorsport…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-356524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}