By Joe Murphy
Seemingly out of nowhere, Danish racing driver Frederick Vesti is emerging as the man contender to replace Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes for the 2025 drive. The 21 year old has seen success in motorsport and is officially a reserve driver for the Silver Arrows, making this outcome a real possibility. Along with back-to-back Danish Karting Championships in 2013 and 2014 – in the Cadet Junior and KFJ classes, he also has on his CV a race-winning season in Formula Ford Denmark in 2016, before his subsequent move to F4.
He moved to the Formula Regional European Championship for the following year, taking the title with an impressive 13 wins, before finishing fourth in both the 2020 and 2021 FIA F3 seasons. It is then when the Danish driver joined Mercedes as junior team at the start of the 2021 season. A year later, Vesti moved up to Formula 2 with ART Grand Prix. He enjoyed a strong rookie F2 season, claiming one win, one pole position and four further podiums leading to a ninth place finish.
He moved to Prema for the following season. Fred put in an impressive second F2 season, missing out on the title by just 11 points. He did, however, add six further wins and four extra podiums, to his record.
With George Russell set to lead the team moving forward, looking to the drivers in their ranks will surely be a viable option. Estaban Ocon seems settled at Alpine and the Nyck de Vries experience didn’t really work at Alpha Tauri. So Vesti is the perfect candidate. He has racing experience and deserves to call up to drive with the world’s best. Then he will have only two options; sink or swim.
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