Arvid Lindblad: The British teen making F1 history

This story is taken from the summer 2026 issue of Dazed, which is on sale internationally from June 5. Pre-order a copy of the magazine here.

There are two versions of Arvid Lindblad. In the public eye, there’s the poised and polished racing prodigy who made his Formula One debut in March, having become the youngest-ever race winner in Formula Two last year. Beneath the glossy livery, however, there’s the 18-year-old kid from Surrey, who likes Drake, skating, Snapchat and going to Nando’s with his friends. Despite driving at speeds upwards of 200mph for work, Lindblad is yet to get his licence, which means that today, as we traverse the streets of Milton Keynes from one shoot location to the next, he’s riding shotgun.

I sit in the back and Lindblad keeps his eyes on the road ahead, scarcely looking back at me as if we’re in a confessional. His sin? He never watched Marty Supreme, even after asking Timothée Chalamet for one of his viral jackets. “That’s pretty bad,” he admits. Late last year, like thousands of teenagers around the world, Lindblad was desperate to get his hands on some of the merch for the movie, in which Chalamet stars as a ludicrously ambitious table tennis hopeful. “I was very lucky that some of our contacts were able to talk to Timothée,” he says. “Apparently it’s quite strict how they do it. I didn’t realise they had to go to him directly. Then they had to take a photo giving the jacket to me to make sure it didn’t get lost.”

He may not have seen the film, but Lindblad recognises similarities between himself and Chalamet’s goal-obsessed character, Marty Mauser. “I’ve seen snippets and I do relate to him,” he says. “I remember Gwyneth Paltrow’s character saying something like, ‘What happens if this little table tennis gig doesn’t work out?’ and he says, ‘It doesn’t even come into my consciousness,’ or something like that. That was really the same thing for me. My goal was Formula One and that was all I had my eyes on. I wanted it so badly that I couldn’t see a future where it didn’t happen. It wasn’t about having a plan B. Formula One was non-negotiable.”

Lindblad’s dream became his reality this spring, when he made history at the Australian Grand Prix as Britain’s youngest-ever F1 driver. “It’s a day I’ll remember for the rest of my life,” he says. He may be the only rookie in the lineup this season, but he’s certainly not driving like it. Behind the wheel for Visa Cash App Racing Bulls – the cool younger sibling of Red Bull – he made an astonishing debut, becoming the third-youngest points scorer in the sport’s history and finishing in P8 (eighth place in racing lingo). At one point he even found himself in P3, overtaking drivers he has looked up to since he was very young, including world champions like Lando Norris, Max Verstappen and Fernando Alonso.

Born and raised in Virginia Water, a sleepy commuter village on the outskirts of London, Lindblad decided he wanted to be an F1 driver when he was four years old. He recalls watching it on TV with his dad, transfixed by the screen, and hashing out a plan to get there himself. At five he had started karting and, at six, he attended his first British Grand Prix, which confirmed his desire to race. 

At school, Lindblad preferred to keep his ambitions to himself. “When I was about seven or eight, I got picked on for karting,” he recalls. “It was understandable. Most normal people go to the kart track and it’s just two pedals and a steering wheel. They couldn’t relate to the fact I was taking it so seriously.” His classmates became less of an issue as he started to miss more school. At first, he was skipping one or two Fridays a month to take part in kart racing competitions, but by the time he was 11 he was competing across Europe and missing “two or three weeks a month”.

As the one who introduced him to motorsport, his father was supportive from the start. His mum, on the other hand, needed a little more convincing. “I come from a partly Indian background and the stereotype is that education is very important, which was the case at home,” says Lindblad. “For her, it was hard to accept me missing school, and education not being my first priority. It created a bit of conflict at home.” Lindblad’s maternal grandparents were born in India’s Punjab region but were forced to flee to Delhi during the partition. They moved to England in the 1970s, where they worked as GPs until relatively recently – Lindblad’s grandmother, his nani, retired aged 82. “My mum had to force her to stop working,” he says. “That describes my family in a nutshell.”

His father was born to a working-class family in rural Sweden, hustling his way up the ranks of the finance industry and going on to found his own investment company. During races, Lindblad proudly bears all three flags – Indian, Swedish and English – on his helmet. “It’s quite a rare mix, but I’m very proud of it,” he says. “It’s shaped me into who I am as a driver and as a person. I want to carry that on my helmet because, when I’m in the car, that’s what the outside world sees.”

“I come from a family that had to work for everything they had. I don’t have any interest in the lavish Monaco stereotype”

Lindblad credits his family’s attitude towards work with keeping him grounded, and seems uninterested in the luxury lifestyle often associated with F1 drivers. “Not everyone has the opportunity to race in Formula One and I’m very grateful to have had that opportunity due to my parents’ hard work,” he explains. “My dad got his first job at 11 while his parents struggled to put three meals on the table [...] I come from a family that had to work for everything they had. It’s given me an awareness about the world, and because of that I don’t have any interest in the lavish Monaco stereotype.”

It’s partly due to his background that Lindblad idolised Lewis Hamilton more than any other driver. “I felt a connection to him because he was the only driver of colour,” he says, “but also because his rookie year [2007] was the same year that I was born.” He remembers meeting Hamilton for the first time last year during the Belgian Grand Prix. “We were staying in motorhomes and I ended up playing Uno with him and Isack [Hadjar] one Friday night. I don’t think he knew who I was, but to sit across from him, have a laugh and talk to him like a normal person – someone that I’d seen on the TV for years – was surreal.” Lindblad was racing in F2 at the time, but less than a year later the two drivers were reunited, this time as competitors on the F1 grid.

Lindblad is only the third driver of Indian descent to race in F1 and the first in over a decade, following in the footsteps of Narain Karthikeyan and Karun Chandhok. He’s keen to connect with his heritage more, and above anything would love the opportunity to race at the Indian Grand Prix. Sadly, the race only ever took place three times, between 2011 and 2013, but he’s hopeful for its return. “I’m very proud of my Indian background,” he says. “If there was a grand prix in India that would be very special for me.”

After a string of record-breaking feats – he is currently the youngest-ever F2 and F3 race winner, a feat he accomplished in consecutive years – it was announced last December that Lindblad would be graduating from F2 to F1. Since then, his schedule has been filled with intense training and trips around the world from race to race. He recently began vlogging his experiences on YouTube, detailing his daily routine which includes workout sessions, simulator practice and hours dedicated to building neck muscle – hugely important for drivers to withstand the G-force of the car. 

It’s a very different life from those of his friends, who are mostly in their first year of university, busy being freshers and going out every other night of the week. Fomo would be an understandable response. “I didn’t have a very normal teenage life,” he says, as if it was decades ago. “It’s not been easy but it’s a sacrifice that I was always willing to make. I’ve got good friends at home – for the first time in quite a few years, to be honest. When I have time off, we hang out and I try to be a normal 18-year-old, but I do appreciate that my life is a bit nuts.” His tone brightens and it becomes clear that, while he misses his friends, he doesn’t envy them. “I’m fortunate enough to be driving some of the coolest cars in the world and doing shoots like this. But if you were to ask my friends about me, I think they would say I’m just a normal kid.”

That normal kid just reached one million followers on Instagram. (“Quite proud of that,” he says, with a smug grin.) Over the past few years, F1 has gone from being a sport your dad watches on a Sunday afternoon to the world’s most popular annual sporting series. Since 2018, its fanbase has grown by 63 per cent, with women now making up 42 per cent of its audience. The fans are getting younger, too – almost half are aged under 35. Social media has given us an open invite to the famously exclusive paddock club; meanwhile, films and TV shows like the Oscar-nominated F1 and Netflix’s hit reality series Drive to Survive have further popularised the sport among millennials and Gen Z. Lindblad says F1 the movie was “OK” but questions the authenticity of Drive to Survive (often dubbed “the Kardashians on wheels”). “As I got closer [to F1], I got less into it,” he says. “When Red Bull took me under their wing and I got more exposed to the F1 team, I thought I should pay attention to the real thing rather than watching it on TV.”

“Formula One wasn’t the end goal for me. The dream has always been to be world champion”

Naturally, as motorsport becomes more popular, the drivers get more famous. At the races, they’re treated like gods. It’s like Beatlemania, or One Direction at Wembley in 2014. It’s no wonder Lindblad reached a million followers just three races into the season, or that he’s being recognised more and more in public. “You really do appreciate that you are one of only 22 [F1 drivers] in the world,” he says. Even so, he doesn’t see himself as a celebrity yet. “For sure, things have changed, but I wouldn’t really say the fame has come. I’m just a rookie. There’s a lot of scope to grow.”

Although he keeps his feet firmly on the ground, Lindblad shoots for the stars with his ambitions. In 2021, aged 13, he approached Lando Norris at a race, boldly claiming, “I’ll see you in five years” – a moment captured on video and immortalised online. Five years later, Lindblad has stayed true to his word. Since then, he’s been perceived as a master manifester, though he admits he doesn’t know what that means. “I don’t really know what manifestation is exactly,” he says. “I believed I could be in Formula One and I wanted it really badly.”

Instead, Lindblad turns to religion to guide him. “From an early age, me and my nani have celebrated Puja together. Whenever I’m with my grandparents, we’ll do that. They gave me a blessing before my first race this year.” He shared some touching videos of the moment online, prompting praise in the comments. “We have an F1 nani now,” one user wrote. “Never thought I’d see ‘nani’ on an F1 team’s content,” wrote another.

Lindblad is still figuring out his goals beyond the grid – he is a teenager, after all – but for now, he says he’s channelling everything into his number one priority: “Formula One wasn’t the end goal for me. The dream has always been to be world champion. The goal is to retire with a world championship.” If his track record has proved anything, we’ve got reason to believe that’s exactly what he’ll do.