Arvid Lindblad Is Eyeing Purple Glory

ARVID LINDBLAD IS ALREADY SEATED WHEN I WALK INTO THE ROOM.

He looks like what he is: an 18-year-old on the brink of something enormous, still figuring out how to occupy the space around him. He sits forward in his chair, hands folded loosely. He’s undeniably good-looking—sharp features, curly brown hair that falls into place without effort, a hint of his Indian ancestry in the set of his features.

Watching him, it briefly crosses my mind whether Formula One, now a sport as much about optics as outcomes, quietly takes note of these things. The cameras certainly will find him. There’s a trace of nervousness in how he begins answers, a slight hesitation before committing to a sentence. You can tell he’s starting out—learning how interviews work, how being seen works. But mention the car, or a race, and something shifts. His eyes lift. This, clearly, is where he feels at home.

“It’s funny when people say you’ve made it,” he says, when asked about stepping into Formula One. “Because once you get there, you kind of start from zero again.”

Lindblad’s rise has been startling even by motorsport’s tough standards. He has just been announced as a Formula One driver for the 2026 season with the Visa Cash App Racing Bulls Formula One Team. From Formula 4 to Formula One in just three years—faster than almost anyone in the modern feeder system—his trajectory has prompted murmurs across paddocks and team briefings alike.

But to understand Lindblad, you have to start well before lap times. Motorsport, for him, is inheritance. His paternal grandfather was an avid racing fan, “watching anything with wheels and an engine”. His father, Stefan Lindblad, flirted briefly with motocross as a teenager, before financial restraints forced him to stop.

However, when Arvid was three, his father put him on a motocross bike. It lasted only months—“a bit too much for my mum,” Lindblad recalls. But the seed was already planted. Karting followed at five, and unlike motocross, it stayed. Lindblad remembers liking the sensation of speed, but more than that, the process of improving. “Trying to always go faster,” he says. “Perfecting the corners.”

One of his earliest memories comes from outside a racetrack entirely. He was four, sitting at home with his father, watching Formula One on television. “I asked him how you get there,” Lindblad recalls. “If it was possible. If I could be there one day.” His father explained the ladder. The logic of it appealed to him. “From then on,” he says, “I knew that was where I wanted to be.” By seven, he had already decided this is what we wanted to do.

At nine, he was taken under the wing by British racing driver Oliver Rowland, who would become a mentor and reference point. At 14, Lindblad joined the Red Bull Junior Team, an academy renowned for being ruthless. Here, drivers progress quickly—or they don’t progress at all.

His junior career reflects the volatility of the Red Bull system. He entered single-seater racing in 2022, joining Van Amersfoort Racing midway through the Italian Formula 4 Championship. It was a learning year by design: limited testing, unfamiliar machinery and modest results. He finished the season 17th, scoring points in three races. But Lindblad doesn’t dramatise these moments. “You always learn more from the bad days than the good days,” he says. “Especially when you’re moving up so quickly, there’s so much to learn in a short period of time.” The acceptance feels genuine.

Everything shifted in 2023 with Prema Racing. Lindblad won at Imola, took two victories at Misano and swept all three races at Monza. A late-season drop in pace changed the picture. Kacper Sztuka and teammate Ugo Ugochukwu capitalised, and Lindblad slipped to third overall. He ended the year emphatically at the Macau Grand Prix, taking pole position and winning both races.

In 2024, Lindblad stepped up to FIA Formula 3 with Prema, and it was here that his racing began to look complete. The second half of the season was less kind, with qualifying struggles at Hungary, Spa, and Monza, combined with race incidents, halted his title charge. He finished fourth in the championship, but as the highest-scoring rookie, helped Prema secure the teams’ title.

Formula 2 in 2025 came quickly after that. Too quickly, some felt. Lindblad became the youngest race winner in the category’s history, then one of its youngest pole-sitters, converting that pole into a feature race win in Barcelona. He finished the season sixth overall, with three victories and five podiums. Enough to make the next step to Formula 1 unavoidable. In December 2025, Racing Bulls confirmed him for their 2026 Formula One line-up.

“It feels good,” Lindblad says. “But I wouldn’t say it feels like I’ve made it. It just feels like this is what I’ve been working towards.”

Away from the circuit, Lindblad carries a complex identity. Born in Surrey to a Swedish father and an Indian mother, he describes himself as British, but speaks with warmth and familiarity about his Indian heritage. His maternal grandparents are traditional, he says, doctors who moved to the UK as adults. “I’ve grown up with that culture around me,” he says. “The food, the traditions, all of it. I’ve been surrounded by it from the beginning.”

In a sport that has seen few Indian drivers, Lindblad’s arrival carries quiet significance. There’s frequent discussion about what it would mean for him to represent India in Formula One. Lindblad doesn’t resist the idea, but he doesn’t inflate it either. “It’s a nice stat,” he says. “I’m proud of it. But it doesn’t really affect my day-today. I enjoy driving, and I want to win.”

That focus—on process rather than narrative—comes up repeatedly. He also tells the now-famous story of him approaching Lando Norris at a kart track when he was 14. “I just went up to him,” Lindblad recalls. “And the first thing that came out was, ‘I’m going to see you in five years.’”

After the final race in Abu Dhabi last season, Norris messaged Lindblad after his Formula One announcement—Well done. Congratulations. See you around on the grid.

Preparation for his rookie season has already begun. Simulator sessions. Long days with engineers. Physical training ramped up, particularly for his neck. “No matter how much you do,” he admits, “the real car always feels different. You always feel it the first day.”

“It’s going to be a challenge,” he says. “Probably more than normal, because I’ve come through so quickly.”

When asked what advice he’d give a young Indian kid watching him now, he pauses. “Believe in yourself,” he says. “And work hard. If you want it badly enough, you can make it happen.”