British motorsport is currently blessed with a host of youngsters, several of them F1 affiliated, on the single-seater ladder; all striving to become the anointed successor to four-times F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton.
In this group we have Red Bull protégé and Macau GP winner Dan Ticktum who will compete in F3 in 2018, Ferrari Academy member Callum Ilott will spearhead ART’s 2018 GP3 line-up, while reigning GP3 champion George Russell (Mercedes) and current F3 champion Lando Norris (McLaren) will ostensibly scrap for this year’s F2 title with ART and Carlin respectively.
But there is a third F1-backed Briton, ready to prove his worth on the FIA’s secondary wrung. Step forward Jack Aitken…
Aitken, 22, will again partner compatriot and arch rival Russell at ART, with last year’s top GP3 pairing both moving up the ladder, and his Formula 1 responsibilities have grown amid his appointment as reserve to Nico Hülkenberg and Carlos Sainz Jr. at Renault. He is the first member of Renault’s Academy to be promoted to such a senior level, and the only one of the initial early-2016 intake to still be involved in the team.

Aitken started out in motorsport having attended “friends’ birthday parties, go-karting, and I quite liked it,” first getting behind the wheel aged seven. “I passed some exams to get into the next school and my Dad took me go-karting as a present and I really liked it, and we kept going back, and eventually started racing.”
It wasn’t until his early teens that he began to pursue racing on a professional basis, realising some of his vanquished opponents “were moving on to bigger things and [I thought] maybe I could do the same.”
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Aitken’s parents stressed that he remained in full-time education until the completion of his A-Levels, mid-2014, meaning that he had to juggle time behind the wheel with time behind the desk at Westminster College…
Aitken’s first year without the distraction of text books and exams was 2015 and it showed, as he secured Renault’s Eurocup 2.0 and 2.0 Alps titles, the former’s alumni of champions including Valtteri Bottas, Stoffel Vandoorne, and Pierre Gasly. Aitken’s double title win coincided with Renault’s full-scale return to F1 – and the manufacturer also hit the restart button on its young driver scheme, which helps with development, as well as relieving the obvious financial burdens.
“It was massively crucial, quite lucky that it coincided, that year was a little bit of a breakthrough as it was the first year that I stopped school,” he reflected. “I won those championships, and Renault came afterwards and said ‘we’re starting the academy, for the first year we’re going to take the top three guys’. It was very well-timed and I’m still here – so obviously they [must] still like me!”
Now backed by Renault, Aitken moved across to the F1-supporting GP3 series and initially struggled, but was the highest-scoring driver over the second half of the campaign, en route to fifth overall in 2016.
“You don’t see a lot of people go from Formula Renault to GP3, usually it’s F3 to GP3, so in the first half of that year I struggled a bit getting to grips with the Pirelli tyres,” he says. “The pace was good, just things kept not quite lining up, it was very frustrating, reliability [issues] as well. Then in Budapest things started to go a bit better, I was regularly towards the front of the field again, at Hockenheim I got a podium and at Spa got a win, had a run of six or seven podiums in the last nine races.”

Aitken’s end-of-year surge was followed by a move to series “powerhouse” ART – which had guided Esteban Ocon and Charles Leclerc to the previous titles – and with 2016’s top four moving on, Aitken was well-placed to succeed the F1-bound youngsters. But the year was far from plain sailing, and Mercedes-backed rookie Russell – bolstered by big lessons in a post-round one test – flourished, romping to the title, leaving Aitken a distant runner-up.
“It was quite a difficult year,” commiserated Aitken. “ART is a great team and we had four cars pretty much dominating that championship but I didn’t quite gel with the car at times and there were some races where it was quite difficult. At the time I don’t think I fully understood why that was, and we struggled a bit because of that, but having gone through it over the winter we have a better grip on it, and even during the tests in F2 we started to get a better picture on what I need as a driver, sometimes you need to be adaptable, sometimes the team needs to adapt to you a little bit.”
Those analyses sessions over the winter at ART’s base unlocked some of the keys to his 2017 season’s failings and weakness.
“A general philosophy with the set-up, I think I had races where I was still sticking it on pole, I had good pace, I was winning races still, but it wasn’t consistent enough,” continued Aitken. “There were some races where we’d turn up and the practice time is so short in GP3 that basically you have 15 or 20 laps and you’re into qualifying. If you have a problem at the start of the weekend it’s very difficult to recover, and we had that a couple of times. With a better understanding this year we should be in a better shape.”
Aitken’s pre-season programme began badly – with the new-for-2018 turbo-powered F2/18 machine emitting plumes of smoke from his garage on the first test day – but things have since picked up, with Aitken among the front-runners as he gears up for Bahrain. The tests convinced him that the F2 car is more suited to his driving style.
“It’s got a bit more power, a bit more downforce, and I’ve always gone a little bit better the higher up I go, so it feels quite nice.”
He is also expecting his relationship with Russell to be “more intense” in a “more competitive championship” and knows ART is “hungry” to succeed off the back of a couple of lean years in GP2/F2 since Vandoorne’s dominant 2015 campaign.

Aitken acknowledges the nature of F2 makes it “always difficult for a rookie… but Charles did it last year; he was helped by Prema absolutely nailing the car but it’s possible” and that “there’s no reason why we can’t be winning races.”
Aitken sees a few obvious candidates as possible title favourites.
“Lando, a lot of people talking about him, he’s had a lot of resources behind him the last couple of years, he’s been a bit of a project in a sense!” added the Renault youngster. “He’s very well equipped as a rookie, despite his age he’s better equipped than any of us rookies, me and even George, so he’s going to be a force, and Carlin have been quick. George obviously, some of the drivers who are more experienced, [Nyck] de Vries, obviously [Artem] Markelov could be a threat,” but wisely – with most of the field very close during testing, Aitken reckons, “it’s going to be the first couple of races until it really shakes out.”
Aitken is illuminating and enlightening company, conscious that he can use his Korean heritage – his mother is from the South Korean capital – to benefit the nation’s motorsport scheme.
“Seoul is a really nice place, we have family there, and every time we go I meet up with people from the [Korean Motorsport] Federation and try and think about how we can improve the motorsport side.”
Currently Aitken is in the stressful process of moving from London to Oxford to be closer to Renault’s base, aware that he is, “taking on more of a serious job, travelling a lot, so I need to spend my time at home more wisely, I need to be closer to the factory.”
The Formula 1 dream remains on the horizon for Aitken, who is aware that Renault will determine the duration of his stay in the championship, not just on pure results but also his learning curve and off-track application; if he can thrust himself into contention for overall honours, then the opportunity to expand his role – and make the next step – will surely come…