Arvid Lindblad impressed his Red Bull paymasters with a sixth-place classification in FP1 for the Formula 1 Mexico City Grand Prix that Helmut Marko described as “solid”.
The young Brit, a product of the Milton Keynes-based squad’s junior programme, was making his second F1 weekend appearance, having also done FP1 for sister team Racing Bulls at Silverstone in July.
Lindblad ran in place of reigning World Champion Max Verstappen, and was utilised with set-up experiments, different to that of its second driver, Yuki Tsunoda.
With rumours rife that the the F2 star will take one of the seats at Racing Bulls next season, the session was another opportunity to get his eye in, at a race track with a myriad of tricky aspects that could catch out a young pretender.
But Marko intimated that he was impressed with Lindblad’s showing, ending the day the fastest of all the eight rookies that partook in the session.
“He did a solid job,” the Austrian told Autosport.
“I mean it was a difficult situation for him, everybody told him don’t do anything wrong, don’t crash, don’t make a scratch on the car, but he still delivered, he was by far the fastest rookie and his technical feedback was also very impressive.”
The record books will show that Lindblad outpaced Tsunoda, but in truth, the Japanese was on a longer, race-style run, however Marko revealed to Autosport that their two different plajs crossed over.
“Yuki did a long run, he [Lindblad] didn’t, but at some stages they were on the same sort of run plan,” said Marko.
The Red Bull advisor added that Lindblad showed a lot of maturity when it came to not being overawed by the experience and took in the finer aspects of other aspects.
“It was very clear and he never got excited, he was calm, and the technical feedback had profound influence. It was a very, how should I say, exact definition,” he said.
Red Bull boss Mekies similarly pleased with Lindblad showing in Mexico City
Another impressive aspect of Lindblad’s running was that, given he was running Verstappen’s #1 car, he also carried the revised floor that the Dutchman is taking on his RB21 for this weekend at the Hermanos Rodriguez Circuit.
This was not lost on Team Principal Laurent Mekies, who was likewise pleased with the teenager’s outing in the car.
“We took the decision to leave Arvid on rather low-ish fuel,” he said. “Just not to give him the complications of low-high-low as we normally all do in FP1.
“But he did a very, very good job.
“It’s so difficult to jump in [to the car] in the context [of driving Verstappen’s car with new components installed]. He did a very good job, and as you can see the pace is there, so not much to argue against.”
READ MORE – F1 2025 Mexico City Grand Prix – FP1 Results
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