Photo: Red Bull
Red Bull has announced it has added karters Fionn McLaughlin and Scott Lindblom to its junior team.
The pair earned their spots through the relaunch of the Red Bull Driver Search, a shootout which first ran before the brand even had its own Formula 1 team.
Red Bull rented the Jerez circuit for three days last week to trial 11 drivers aged 13-16 in a group of GP3 and Formula 4 cars with the technical support of Campos Racing (which runs Red Bull juniors in Formula 2 and F4).
The finalists other than Lindblom and McLaughlin have not been named, and while “more Red Bull Driver Search names going through to the programme will be announced soon” it is not clear if they were also participants of the Jerez test. It has also not been stated if the single-seater newcomers were all benchmarked in both machines or only in the entry-level F4 car.
Lindblom said “my biggest challenge was adjusting my driving style from karting to F4 because it was my first time in a F4 car”, but it did not prove an issue as RBJT boss Dr Helmut Marko noted “he went out and was straight away competitive”.
The 14-year-old Swede leads the WSK Euro Series for OK karts, having only stepped up to senior karting in June, is currently 11th in the Champions of the Future series and has performed strongly in the CIK-FIA European championship too but has not been entered for points.
He started 2024 by coming 11th in the WSK Super Master Series for OK Junior karts, and in that category he was previously third in the CIK-FIA World championship, fourth in the WSK Euro Series, 11th in CotF and 15th in the European championship.
McLaughlin is 16, and the Irishman has come seventh and sixth in the European championship the last two years. In CotF he was 16th in 2023 and is currently fourth in the 2024 standings. On X30 Senior karts he has also had success, starring in this year’s Winter Cup before embarking on a championship-leading Euro Series campaign. He came fourth in it last year.
On X30 Junior karts he was IAME Warriors Final runner-up, fourth in the IAME Euro Series and Winter Cup.
The inaugural running of RBJT’s driver search was in 2002 and sought to find and then support a young American driver, with the intent of getting them to F1. There were 15 shortlisted, aged 16-24, who made it through to a shootout test at Paul Ricard but two chose not to attend and there was controversies before the test occurred.
Low-powered single-seaters were used, intended to remove the experience advantage for the finalists already racing in higher tiers of the open-wheel ladder, and Paul Edwards, Grant Maiman, Joel Nelson and Scott Speed were signed as juniors.
Later in the 2000s once it had its own team on the grid, drivers such as Daniel Ricciardo were selected to join the Junior Team from similar shootouts against other young drivers, but more recently Red Bull has usually scouted out drivers on an individual basis.