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Racing Bulls' technical leadership has delivered an emphatic endorsement of 18-year-old Arvid Lindblad following the team's private Barcelona shakedown, with team principal Alan Permane drawing compelling comparisons between the rookie and former Racing Bulls driver Isack Hadjar.
The parallels are significant—Hadjar took a similar developmental path through Red Bull's sister team during his 2025 rookie campaign before earning promotion to the main Red Bull seat alongside four-time world champion Max Verstappen. Now, Lindblad finds himself in an analogous position, and early indications suggest he possesses the temperament and technical acumen required to flourish in Formula 1's elite arena.
Isack Hadjar's trajectory offers a compelling roadmap for the British-Swedish prospect. After an impressive debut season with Racing Bulls in 2025, Hadjar impressed the Red Bull hierarchy sufficiently to secure a coveted promotion to the senior team—a rare achievement that underscores the competitive intensity required to progress through the Red Bull ecosystem.
Lindblad, who finished sixth in the Formula 2 standings with three victories from five podiums, now occupies the Racing Bulls seat vacated by Hadjar, racing alongside Liam Lawson. The structural similarity is intentional: Racing Bulls continues to function as an incubator for Red Bull's most promising talent.
During the Barcelona testing window held from 26-30 January, Permane observed qualities in Lindblad that immediately evoked comparisons to Hadjar's composure under pressure. "Very impressed with both. He's very calm, he's very cool – nothing seems to faze him," Permane explained. "He's a little bit like I described Isack last year – he just wants to learn, he just wants to take in as much information as he can. He's asking lots and lots of questions, he's asking lots of advice – how should he do this, how should he do that?"
These observations are crucial: they suggest Lindblad possesses emotional intelligence and intellectual curiosity, two attributes that typically correlate with successful rookie campaigns. Rather than approaching F1 with overconfidence, Lindblad appears acutely aware of the knowledge gap he must bridge. This humility, combined with demonstrated pace—Permane acknowledged that "the pace looks like it's there"—creates an encouraging foundation.
Racing Bulls' chief technical officer Tim Goss reinforced Permane's assessment with equally glowing praise, highlighting the 18-year-old's professionalism and technical communication. "He's really calm, really professional, feedback is really straightforward. For someone so young, it's really, really impressive," Goss stated. The feedback loop is particularly crucial in modern Formula 1; drivers must articulate nuanced observations about vehicle behavior to facilitate engineering development.
Goss emphasized the complexity Lindblad faces: "They're very, very different, not just the general handling of the car but the way you've just got to manage the energy and the energy management, and he's just been really, really cool, calm, professional. As we're getting to grips with the balance of the car, his feedback has just been really simple, really clear."
Lindblad enters an exceptionally demanding regulatory environment. As the sole official rookie on the 2026 grid, he shoulders pressure unique to his cohort, facing an entirely new generation of cars and powerplants with the Red Bull-Ford partnership. This regulatory reset equalizes preparation timelines somewhat, yet experience remains invaluable.
With the Barcelona shakedown complete, further testing awaits in Bahrain during two sessions: 11-13 February and 18-20 February. These crucial preparation windows will provide additional data points to assess Lindblad's readiness for the season's curtain-raiser at Albert Park.
Alan Permane's optimism, grounded in direct observation of Lindblad's demeanor and performance, suggests Racing Bulls has secured a prospect capable of replicating Hadjar's success trajectory. If the 18-year-old continues demonstrating the composure, professionalism, and intellectual inquisitiveness witnessed in Barcelona, Formula 1 may have discovered another Red Bull protégé primed for rapid progression.
He’s a software engineer with a deep passion for Formula 1 and motorsport. He co-founded Formula Live Pulse to make live telemetry and race insights accessible, visual, and easy to follow.