Lindblad crashes in FP2 yet still qualifies 10th at Spanish Grand Prix for Racing Bulls

Arvid Lindblad shrugged off a heavy Friday crash to qualify tenth for the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona, with the Racing Bulls rookie reaching Q3 for the tenth time this season despite completing only seven laps across the final two practice sessions.

Lindblad lost control of his VCARB 03 at Madring’s Turn 13 left-hander during FP2, damaging the right-hand side of the car and ending his running for the day. A chassis change meant he managed just two flying laps in FP3, leaving him with a set-up locked in from FP1 and little opportunity to rebuild rhythm before qualifying.

“The bigger thing was just that I didn’t drive in FP3,” Lindblad said. “If I had done all of FP3, I don’t think it really would have hurt me too much. But the reality was, I had the crash and then I only did two laps in FP3 and I didn’t really get a chance to get comfortable again. And that was the thing that hurt me.”

Despite those limitations, the Anglo-Swede matched interim team-mate Yuki Tsunoda’s pace in Q1 and then beat him by 0.9 seconds in Q2 to secure his place in the top-ten shootout. He has not been outqualified by a team-mate since the Silverstone sprint.

Lindblad was unapologetic about the crash itself, framing it as an acceptable cost of pushing at the limit. “I’m not going to beat myself up for crashing, because it’s something that’s inevitable,” he said. “I’ve been so on the limit this year, I’ve been so fast. It’s my 10th Q3 of the season. I’m allowed to make mistakes. I’m going to learn from it.”

At 18, Lindblad is the fourth-youngest driver in Formula 1 history, and his consistency across the season has been striking. He has scored points in seven of the last eight rounds and has yet to retire from a grand prix — though a clutch failure prevented him from starting in Montreal. His fourth-place time in FP2, set before the crash ended his session early, hinted at the pace available had the weekend unfolded differently.

“I definitely think that if I hadn’t had that crash yesterday, the trajectory to quali would have been very different and I would have been a lot happier,” he acknowledged — before adding, with characteristic pragmatism, that a top-four finish in the session was never realistic once the leading teams found their stride.