{"id":393345,"date":"2026-04-23T06:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T06:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/393345\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T06:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T06:44:10","slug":"mclaren-f1-signs-11-year-old-rnz-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/393345\/","title":{"rendered":"McLaren F1 signs 11-year-old | RNZ News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4JX77K0_PSNEWZ_00318352_0228_jpg.jpeg\" width=\"1050\" height=\"700\" alt=\"McLaren of Oscar Piastri, 2025.\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\nMcLaren of Oscar Piastri, 2025.<br \/>\nPhoto: FLORENT GOODEN \/ PHOTOSPORT\n<\/p>\n<p>British karter Harry Williams has become the youngest ever signing to Formula One champions McLaren&#8217;s Driver Development Programme at the age of 11.<\/p>\n<p>The previous youngest current member was Ella Hakkinen, daughter of double F1 world champion Mika, signed last year aged 14.<\/p>\n<p>McLaren&#8217;s young driver programme has produced world champions Lewis Hamilton, the most successful driver in the history of Formula One with seven titles including his first with the Woking-based team in 2008, and reigning champion Lando Norris.<\/p>\n<p>Hamilton joined in 1998 at the age of 13.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our goal is to build a consistent pipeline, laddering into our race programmes in F1, IndyCar and the World Endurance Championship for many years to come, and adding Harry as a talented young karter demonstrates this,&#8221; said McLaren&#8217;s chief business affairs officer Alessandro Alunni Bravi.<\/p>\n<p>New Zealand&#8217;s Liam Lawson was 17 when he joined the Red Bull Junior Team in 2019.<\/p>\n<p>-Reuters with additional reporting from RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren of Oscar Piastri, 2025. Photo: FLORENT GOODEN \/ PHOTOSPORT British karter Harry Williams has become the youngest&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45,213],"class_list":["post-393345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}