Looking back at Arvid Lindblad’s 2024 season: A record-breaking rookie year

Arvid Lindblad described his 2024 Formula 3 season with PREMA Racing as “incredible” as the rookie set several records en route to fourth place in the standings.

The Red Bull Junior made a spectacular start to the season and won the first sprint race of the year in Sakhir on his debut.

His first victory in the feature race at Barcelona came a few laps later, before Lindblad became the first driver to win all races at an F3 weekend at Silverstone.

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Looking back, Lindblad said: “It was a very good year. When I started I knew it was going to be really challenging, really difficult. Having only driven F4 for a year before, I had very little experience.

“I knew most of the tracks, but not all, and given the format it was going to be a real challenge. I also knew it would be difficult given the short travel time and the level is so high.

“I’m really grateful to everyone at Red Bull, everyone at PREMA and everyone in my team who prepared me and got me fit. I feel like we prepared really well from the Jerez test to Bahrain and took a huge step forward.

“But I stayed on that course until Barcelona and also Silverstone and I think both were important factors that led to a strong year. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. I knew a year would be difficult, the goal was to only do one, but I knew it would be a big challenge.

“But a lot of people around me did a great job and helped me achieve this strong result. Overall it was an incredible season, I’m very happy with it, there are still some things we need to work on but overall I’m very happy.”

While he went into the final round at Monza with a chance of winning the title, Lindblad’s hopes suffered a blow when he failed to score a point in the previous two rounds.

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He admits he “could have done better” at Spa but attributes his difficulties in Budapest and Monza to things beyond his control.

As his preparations begin for 2025 in Formula 2, Lindblad is still positive about his F3 season, especially when told that his win percentage of 20 is now the best in the history of the championship.

The Brit puts this “good record” down to his continued improvement over the season, particularly in the behind-the-scenes aspects that the public doesn’t see.

“The pace was high at the beginning, but not outstanding,” he explained. “It was good in the races, for example in Bahrain and Melbourne, I think I qualified ninth and eighth. But then we had the Barcelona test and from then on I took a big step forward.

“After that I was consistently in the top five for several rounds, so there was definitely a step up compared to Melbourne and Imola. Then it was about tire management and gaining further experience.

“It’s hard to say because I had such poor results with tire management in Imola and Melbourne. Part of that was because I was racing against people I was faster in Bahrain and Melbourne, so it’s easy to salvage. But as I started getting more competitive in feature racing, you’re racing against people who are really fast.

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“So if I’m able to go fast and then be really great with the tires, I struggled with those two factors in the beginning and that’s improved.”

“Then I think other things have improved behind the scenes that have had an impact on the result, a lot of little things that I’ve learned through the experience in the Championship. So, like my understanding of how to manage FPs, put yourself in the best position in Quali and how to handle Quali sessions.

“Often you don’t have time to make a setup change to the car during qualifying. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the position on the track or a setup change, but with things like that you gain experience, and a lot of them had a big impact on the results.”

As Lindblad looked back on his 20 races in Formula 3, he picked out some of his highlights, and while Silverstone will stay with him for a long time, there were other moments that stuck with him too.

“Silverstone is the fundamental answer,” he said. “It’s obviously incredible, I haven’t raced at home in England since 2018 and to do the double was amazing. So if I could choose one moment from the year I would choose this weekend and mainly the feature race.

“It’s probably the first time in motorsport that I’ve won a race. I didn’t think I would win. It wasn’t negative, it was realistic when you start P9 in a dry race on a track like Silverstone with the hard tires and the grade is so big that I thought about finishing P5, P6, P7 and Could save some points, it would be a good weekend, so the win was crazy.

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“But of course there were other races that were really special, namely the Bahrain Sprint. The first weekend, winning on debut, Monaco qualifying, and that was a bit overlooked and I think was more impressive than some of the other things I’ve done.

“It was my first time on the track, we did two laps in FP and I did two laps in qualifying, but because of the red flags in our group, the other group had four push laps, we had two and everyone I was against “I had that too.” I’ve been there three or four times.

“You build that knowledge on a street circuit like this and because we literally did two laps in dry FP and two laps in qualifying to deliver, and of course the Barcelona Feature and Silverstone, but those were so impressive that I was almost surprised was myself.”