Freddie Slater has one main goal right now \u2013 to get to Formula 1.<\/p>\n
There’s plenty of talk around the young British driver, with the 17-year-old preparing to race in his rookie Formula 3 season with TRIDENT Motorsport and he was also recently announced as the first member of Audi\u2019s newly-formed Driver Development Programme<\/a>.<\/p>\n The latter is an opportunity he knows doesn’t come around often, as he looks to continue the rapid progress he’s shown up until now.<\/p>\n \u201cJoining Audi and also being the first member of their Driver Development Programme is incredible,\u201d says Slater, speaking in Barcelona ahead of the F3 pre-season test.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are all about the long term and that’s the thing for me, because even though I am just starting in F3, and that\u2019s my full focus, my full goal is to get to F1.<\/p>\n \u201cSo now it’s just about slowly starting to build me into hopefully an up and coming Formula 1 driver. It’s adding those little bits of one percent that they can add with what my team have already done, and just to keep improving day by day.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it’s a very cool team I’ve got around me now and lots of cool people to take the information from \u2013 to then use it and hopefully get better.\u201d<\/p>\n Why now was the right time to join an F1 driver academy<\/p>\n Slater has had a meteoric rise to Formula 3, making plenty of waves in single-seater racing after a trophy-laden karting career.<\/p>\n In 2024, the 17-year-old won the Italian and UAE F4 Championships, and he followed that up in 2025, by joining the likes of Kimi Antonelli<\/a>, and last year\u2019s F3 champion, Rafael Camara, in winning the Formula Regional European Championship.<\/p>\n This record has meant there has been long standing interest from several F1 teams for Slater\u2019s signature. However, for him, it was never the correct time to sign on the dotted line \u2013 until now.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, it wasn’t right,\u201d says Slater on joining an F1 academy earlier in his career. \u201cThere was a phase in karting where there was a bit of interest and it wasn’t right then. The end of F4, it wasn’t right at all either.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring the FREC season, I’d probably say is when it started to become a bit more like, \u2018okay, now you’re going to Formula 3, it’s the right time to have a team behind you to start developing you as a driver.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cAt the end of the day, the key is for them to develop you into an upcoming Formula 1 driver to then put you in their car. So it needs to happen at the right time, and this period of time going into Formula 3 is perfect for me.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore that, it was too early because it would have just been a name, they would not have been actually developing me as a driver. So, right now is the perfect time for me to have that, but it doesn’t change much for me.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was quite cool before having everyone guessing, asking me about F1, and I was like, \u2018no, I’m alright on my own.\u2019 I was enjoying it. But my main focus was just to do the job on track, and to let my managers deal with that. So I was pretty oblivious to most of it half the time.\u201d<\/p>\n Learning through the next chapter<\/p>\n Slater has had a busy start to the year, racing in the Formula Regional Oceania Trophy in New Zealand \u2013 finishing second in the Standings with three wins and six podiums in total.<\/p>\n This means he has not had a chance yet to talk with Audi driver, Gabriel Bortoleto<\/a>, who won the Formula 3 title in 2023 with TRIDENT, nor his team mate, Nico Hulkenberg<\/a>.<\/p>\n