Arvid Lindblad became the youngest race winner in the F2 sprint race in Saudi Arabia, making it a Campos 1-2.
Campos has had a slow start to the 2025 F2 season, with Arvid Lindblad struggling to get himself to the front of the grid. Bahrain was Lindblad’s first point in the season, but he was hungry for more.
The stars aligned for the young Brit, and with Richard Verschoor receiving a penalty and Lindblad became a record holder.
The Red Bull Junior’s career has been nothing short of outstanding up until Formula 2. A title in FROCA over the winter, a fourth-place in Formula 3 in 2024, A Macau F4 win in 2023 alongside a top-three finish in the Italian F4 championship. With Helmut Marko, touting Lindblad as the next Max Verstappen.
The hopes and expectations put on Lindblad for the 2025 F2 season have been high. Many are putting the Brit as a title contender.
Lindblad had tried to temper the hopes of others, but his performances fueled the fire. The Brit told the media, “It means a lot. I mean, to be honest, I hadn’t even really thought about the record. I knew I was quite young, I think I’m the youngest ever F2 driver.”
Although the record is a nice stat for Lindblad, he admitted that his focus was on just having a clean weekend.
He said, “I was just focused on trying to have a good weekend here, do a good FP, good quali. And so far, things have gone well. And then the race today was, yeah, it was really good. I got a good start and then was quite competitive in the early laps and was chasing down Richard.”
A title fight
In F3 last year, Arvid Lindblad fell short of the title. He finished the season fourth, 40 points off the lead. Within both F3 and F2, consistency has been the key to winning the titles. Leonardo Fornaroli took the F3 title without winning a race.
Lindblad looks at Jeddah as the start of his championship campaign, and emphasises the need to just ‘get points on the board’.
“For the rest of the championship, just yeah, sort of starting off properly here after two difficult weekends. Yeah, just happy to sort of firstly was to be in the top 10 in quali and then just yeah, now to get some good points on the board and look to start from here.”
The Red Bull junior went on to praise Campos and the machinery underneath him at Jeddah. He confessed that he believes Campos has been fast all season, just missing out on external factors rather than car performance itself.
He said, “I think the car has been competitive in all the weekends so far, just through some stuff on my side, some stuff on the team, external factors. We haven’t been able to put it all on the board and show what we can do.”
“So I think this week, the goal was just to do the basics right. We knew it would be competitive. So I think in general, the car’s baseline is fast.”
Quick progression
Lindblad has moved incredibly quickly through the feeder series ladder, impressing with each jump. His win in Jeddah makes him the first rookie to win the race since Oscar Piastri. A driver who now finds himself fighting for the Formula 1 championship title.
The Brit admitted that he is still inexperienced, but he’s not the only rookie, and he just has to get on with it on weekends with new tracks.
He said, “Obviously, I’m super delighted to be the first driver since Oscar to be a rookie to win here in Jeddah. Obviously, he’s shown himself to be pretty good. Sort of on a learning track side, I’m still quite young and sort of inexperienced, so I feel like every year I’m learning new tracks. So on that side, I don’t think there was anything really new.”
“Like I said, I’m used to learning new tracks and not much time to deal with it. And I think here, because it’s only F2 and F1, there are many rookies who are learning it during FP. Yeah, I don’t know. I think we just sort of cracked on and dealt with it. We don’t really have much time.”
He’ll have another chance to impress in the Feature Race, with more points on offer and chance to shoot up through the standings.
