Red Bull protege Arvid Lindblad will replace Max Verstappen in Free Practice 1 for Formula 1’s Mexico City Grand Prix.
Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko confirmed the Formula 2 race winner was going to take part in FP1 at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, which Motorsport.com understands Verstappen will temporarily vacate his seat for.
Sporting regulations mandate that teams run rookies on grand prix weekends on two occasions for each car this season; Ayumu Iwasa replaced Verstappen in the Bahrain GP’s opening practice session before Lindblad made his first appearance in an official F1 session as he drove Yuki Tsunoda’s RB21 in front of his home crowd at Silverstone.
This won’t matter much to Verstappen, particularly at a Mexico circuit where he enjoys his highest success rate on the calendar – five victories in nine starts so far – but will be key for Lindblad as the 18-year-old British-Swede driver is on track to graduate to F1 with Racing Bulls next year.
Race winner Arvid Lindblad, Campos Racing
Photo by: Formula Motorsport Ltd
A Macau race winner and fourth-place finisher in the F3 championship, Lindblad is only seventh in his maiden F2 campaign, with fellow rookies Leonardo Fornaroli, Luke Browning and Alex Dunne ahead of him in the standings – though the Italian and the Briton got a head start in terms of experience by competing respectively in the last round and last three rounds of the 2024 campaign.
Furthermore, Red Bull is understood to find the current Formula 2 season difficult to judge – including engine parity – and therefore does not believe the standings accurately reflect the drivers’ pecking order.
Regardless, Lindblad has already secured his superlicence by winning the Formula Regional Oceania Championship (formerly the Toyota Racing Series) back in February.
Meanwhile, Motorsport.com understands another Red Bull Junior Team member, Ayumu Iwasa, is likely to partake in FP1 in Mexico too.
Iwasa is expected to drive Liam Lawson’s Racing Bulls, helping the team fulfil the young-driver requirements. Given Isack Hadjar is a rookie himself, Lawson is the only Racing Bulls driver who needs to vacate his car twice this season, and this will be the first occurrence.
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