Photo: Red Bull
Three junior single-seater talents have been driving Formula 1 cars recently, at Monza and in a city centre.
Red Bull junior Nikola Tsolov was on home soil in Bulgaria last weekend driving in a Red Bull showrun on the streets of its capital city Sofia.
He was at the wheel of 2011’s Red Bull RB7, which is too old for use in F1’s testing of previous car (TPC) programmes, but was still a landmark for the 18-year-old FIA Formula 3 driver since the demo (and the day he did on an airfield the day before to learn how to donut) marked his first ever running in an F1 car.
Aston Martin was at Monza last week with its two-year-old AMR23 car to do TPC running with its junior driver Jak Crawford and his F2 rival Cian Shields.
Crawford drove on Friday, following up previous TPC call-ups and driving in F1’s official young driver test at the end of 2024, and Shields drove on Saturday after previously testing with Aston Martin at Silverstone in April.
The 20-year-old Scot is not connected to the team, and is yet to comment on how his test opportunities have came about.
He started his single-seater career in 2022, coming 13th in GB3 with one win, then stepped up to the F3-level Euroformula for 2023. Four wins and six other podiums helped him become championship runner-up.
He moved across to FIA F3 in 2024, which was an unsuccessful endeavour as he came 30th in the standings with no points and a best finish of 14th place. At the end of the year he joined AIX Racing for two F2 rounds, and finished 11th on his second start, then has remained with the team this season. So far he has matched his best result and sits 20th in the standings.
Last month McLaren handed a long-awaited F1 test debut to its simulator driver Jake Hughes at Barcelona, where he drove its MCL60 car from 2023.
The 31-year-old Englishman was a race-winner in GP3, FIA European F3 and the FIA F3 Championship, and had three-top five finishes from 26 races in F2 from 2020 to ’22.
By then his focus was Formula E, joining Mercedes-EQ as test driver in 2020 and in 2021 becoming its full-time development driver, reserve driver for powertrain customer Venturi Racing and simulator driver for Mercedes-AMG’s F1 team.
Those roles continued into 2022, when Aston Martin also signed him as an F1 simulator driver. Hughes finally joined the FE grid in 2023, and across two seasons with McLaren picked up four poles but only one podium. He left its FE squad to join rival Maserati for the 2024-25 season, and has claimed his second podium with the team.
McLaren junior and Formula 4 driver Ella Lloyd has been called up by the team for FE’s rookie test in Berlin next month. She also drove for them in FE’s women’s test at Jarama last November.