British F1 rookie suffers disastrous first lap of his career

Freddie Slater looks to be in pole position as Britain’s next F1 star, but his debut in a grand prix car turned into a rollercoaster.

The 18-year-old was one of 10 rookies taking part in Free Practice 1 at the Mexico City GP, with the young Brit getting behind the wheel for Audi.

Slater has been a star junior driver in recent seasons, with F1 teams clamouring for his signature - but his first chance at a grand prix weekend was incident-packed to say the least.

Freddie Slater almost stopped in his tracks in Mexico

During a season, F1 teams are obliged to give two FP1 sessions per car over to a ‘rookie’ (a driver who has competed in two grands prix or less).

Slater, who joined Audi as a junior driver for 2026, was Audi’s pick in Mexico to replace Gabriel Bortoletto, but it soon went sour.

Heading out on-track, it quickly became apparent a cooling fan had been left in Slater’s right sidepod - with the potentially devastating effect of making his car overheat.

“We have to box this lap. We have an issue,” Slater was told on team radio, duly coming in to the pits to have it removed.

The car then appeared to have more problems leaving the pits, with Slater struggling to get the car moving again.

Once back on-track for the second time, things didn’t get much better. After running just six laps, the Brit was instructed to come in again, his engineer saying: “Turn the engine off, we will not continue.”

His session got worse again before it got better. Slater did then emerge from his garage for a third go, managing a few laps before suffering a massive lock-up and going off-track at the first turn - getting a track limits warning for his efforts.

The Brit then ended with a flourish though - in the dying moments of the session, he set a lap just over a second off his vastly experienced teammate Nico Hulkenberg, and 2.817sec away from the fastest time of Charles Leclerc.

Luckily, the talented Slater will get another go soon - he’s running FP1 in Brazil next week too.