Headline: Why Arvid Lindblad will wear 41 — and why it suits F1’s lone 2026 rookie
Arvid Lindblad’s first laps as a Formula 1 driver will come with an uncommon number slapped on the Racing Bulls’ nose: 41. Not a heritage number. Not a marketing pick. Just two digits that, depending on how you look at them, spell AL — and say plenty about a teenager intent on doing things his own way.
The 18-year-old, stepping into the Racing Bulls seat vacated by Isack Hadjar after his promotion to Red Bull, explained the choice at the team’s Detroit launch. It wasn’t the product of a committee or a focus group. It was a dinner-table nudge.
“So, it’s actually quite funny,” Lindblad said. “I was talking with someone who helps from Red Bull. We were having dinner once, and we were talking about the number, and she suggested 41, 45, and 51, kind of from my name. Because she asked me what I thought and I was like, ‘I have no idea.’ And I thought 41 was the coolest of the three.”
There’s a neat simplicity to it. Turn your head, and 41 becomes AL. More importantly for Lindblad, it isn’t weighed down by history or borrowed legacy.
“I quite liked it because it’s not really a number that’s been used before,” he added. “A lot of the lower numbers have been used in other sports and they’re very associated to someone. So I thought it was cool to have a number that’s not really been used before. And then obviously, yeah, from my name, the initials, you can kind of see it. So yeah, I thought it was quite cool.”
He’s not wrong about its rarity. You have to wind the clock back to 2015 for the last time 41 appeared on an F1 car — Susie Wolff’s Williams during Friday running. Beyond that, it’s a blank canvas. For a rookie, and the only one on the 2026 grid after a deluge of six rookies in 2025, there’s an appealing symmetry to that.
Lindblad arrives highly rated, British-Swedish, and blunt about the path that got him here. His single Formula 2 campaign ended in sixth, short of his own expectations, but with one very influential believer still firmly in his corner: Helmut Marko. The outgoing Red Bull powerbroker has never been everyone’s cup of tea, and Lindblad knows the stories. He just doesn’t share them.
“It’s quite a big thing,” he said of that support. “I mean, I’ve worked very closely with them the last couple years, Rocky [Guillaume Rocquelin, Head of the Red Bull Driver Academy] and Dr Marko and the whole team. I’m extremely grateful for their support and all the work we’ve done, but especially with Dr Marko.
“It’s not been the easiest year for me. I’m not happy with how it’s gone, but he believed in me when others didn’t, and I’m very grateful for that.”
On Marko’s feared reputation, Lindblad is disarmingly matter-of-fact.
“I find it funny when a lot of people say how difficult it can be to work with him… For me, it’s always been the opposite. I’ve always had a very good relationship with him. There are certain things he wants to see… but I’ve always had a very good relationship with him, and he’s helped my career massively.
“I don’t really like excuses and when people talk rubbish, and he doesn’t do that – he just says the truth, and I like to do the same. I think on that side, it’s helped me. It’s helped me to learn the best way, helped me progress the fastest, because he just says the truth and the way things have been. And I appreciate that honesty as well, because there are a lot of people in motorsport who want you to tell them what they want to hear.”
That candor will serve him well. Racing Bulls — the perennial pressure cooker of Red Bull’s junior pipeline — is not the place to hide. Nor, frankly, does Lindblad sound like he wants to. The number 41 won’t transform his rookie year, but it does hint at a driver comfortable in his skin: no cosplay, no borrowed mythology, just a clean font and a clear read on who he is.
Only one rookie means the spotlight will be brighter, the sample size smaller, the judgments sharper. And yet there’s a freedom in that too. No intra-rookie leaderboard. No weekly referendum on who’s “best of the class.” Just Lindblad, a Racing Bulls car, and a number that looks like his initials as he climbs out of the cockpit for the first time.
It’s understated. It’s unconventional. And, for a kid trying to write his own story in a paddock that never stops talking, it might be perfect.
