Lindblad: “It will be nicer to share the track with Hamilton than with Norris”

The only rookie in 2026 Unlike last season, which saw a total of four F1 rookies at the first round of the championship, this year there will be only Arvid Lindblad representing the rookies on the starting grid. The Englishman, together with his teammate Liam Lawson, was among the protagonists of the recent evening event in Detroit, where Racing Bulls presented its single-seater to the world together with Red Bull. Norris or Hamilton? For the 18-year-old, recent champion of Formula Regional Oceania, all that’s missing is the big step into F1, where he will compete with compatriot Lando Norris, winner of the last championship. Yet, as excited as he is, the great desire to challenge the Circus champions is not mainly focused on McLaren’s #1 (to whom he said, in 2021, “see you in five years”), but on the seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton. The reason A perfectly accurate prediction and inspired by what Hamilton himself said as a boy to the then McLaren Team Principal Ron Dennis, which also in that case turned out to be correct. In Detroit, in an interview with TalkSPORT, Lindblad confirmed how less special it will be to duel against Norris compared to Hamilton: “With Lando I was already a bit passionate about the sport when he debuted – he explained – it was only in 2023 that it really started to take off, but Lewis played a fundamental role in my first interest in the sport. I felt a strong connection with him because he was the only black one. His debut took place the year I was born, and he was doing very well when I started to take an interest in this sport.” 2026 will therefore be the year of the big dream for Lindblad, who does not believe that the idea of sharing the track with the current Ferrari driver will create nervousness: “I haven’t thought about it much – he continued – it’s a really fantastic idea, in the sense that when I fell in love with this sport, Lewis was doing well and was starting to win his world championships with Mercedes, and now I’ll share the track with him. Obviously, from this point of view, it’s fantastic. I mean, do you still want to beat yours? idols. So I don’t think I will race with him differently, but it’s certainly nice to be able to share the track with him.”