It’s early morning in Portugal. A 13-year-old English lad, ready for a day of karting, is sitting with his father. The phone rings. “I remember me and my dad were at breakfast at a hotel near Portimao,” recalls Arvid Lindblad. “I was doing some testing there before the world champs. My dad’s phone was on the table and it rang, and it said ‘Graz, Austria’ on the screen.”
Lindblad Senior walked away to take the call: “When he came back he told me that Helmut wanted us to meet him and have a sitdown about joining the Red Bull programme. F1 that year was racing in Portimao, and because we had the world champs there it worked quite well, so we actually met him on the Sunday morning in the hotel that Red Bull were staying in at the Portuguese Grand Prix. That was where we agreed that I was going to join.”
Three years on, Red Bull chief Helmut Marko has fast-tracked young Lindblad to the FIA Formula 3 Championship, upon which he will embark with Prema Racing in a couple of weeks’ time in the Bahrain opener. It’s just a year and six months since he celebrated his 15th birthday in August 2022 and was able to take his fledgling steps
