WHO IS FREDDIE SLATER: THE BRITISH TALENT ANNOUNCED TO RACE FOR TRIDENT IN FORMULA 3
The young British star Freddie Slater has been announced as the first Trident driver for the 2026 Formula 3 season, let’s find out more about him.
Slater begun his racing career at 5 years old when he was first introduced to karting, with the support of his family’s business owned by his father Adrian, Baylis & Harding.
He started to compete in the first official championships at the age of 7, immediately surprising fighting for trophies on the top.
Winning the first IAME Series when aged 11, Slater’s name was starting to be noted over the United Kingdom as one of the future talents of British motorsports. A year later he would defeat Arvid Lindblad and Ugo Ugochukwu in the Junior World Karting Championship, while in 2021 he brought home FIA Karting European Championship by over 30 points.
In his 8-year karting era, Freddie won 9 important championships accross UK and Europe, and the British was set to make the step up to cars racing in 2022 at 14 years old only.
Slater debuted in the Ginetta Junior championship in 2022, and immediately won the Winter series on his debut, with 3 wins in 4 races. He went on to dominate the 2023 championship with 16 wins in 20 races, and was the youngest driver to win in the series.
Freddie debuted on the same year with F4 cars, and on his first qualifying session ever, which took place at Monza for the EURO4 championship, he got pole position for one of the races in that weekend. He finished that year doing the last two rounds of both British and Italian Formula 4, but with no further success.
His first full year in single seaters was 2024, where Freddie raced the Middle Eastern, the Euopean and the Italian F4 championships. Slater managed to win in Italy and in the UAE, breaking the record of Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s number of wins in the Italian series, making it P1 15 times throughout the year.
However, Freddie was beaten by the Indian Akshay Bohra in the European championship by a little less than 18 points, who is now competing against him in the Formula Regional European championship.
The British made the step up to Formula Regional cars at the start of 2025, competing in the Middle Eastern championship, used as preparation for the European season. There, he faced Evan Giltaire as his main rival throughout the season, and ended up finishing the series as a runner-up behind the French, who won the title in Lusail, Qatar.
Bad luck seemed to hit Slater at the start of the European championship though, as two retirements in the first two rounds saw him lose many points in the fights for the title. He made his way up winning 4 races in the following 3 rounds, but he had to face a disqualification from race two at Imola due to technical issues.
Freddie still leads the championship, but to make things even worse for him, he comes out from Austria with a poor result, which allowed another title contender, Matteo de Palo, to get even closer in the standings, and they are now 3 points apart.
Slater has also had the opportunity to debut in FIA Formula 3 this season, replacing Nikita Bedrin in one of AIX’s car in Bahrain, where he surprisingly got a podium on his debut, in the Sprint Race. He was called to race with Hitech as well at Spa. He got pole position for the Sprint race, but a lack of pace did not allow the Brit to score any points, as the Feature race got suddenly cancelled due to poor weather conditions.
Nevertheless he has been announced as a Trident driver for the 2026 Formula 3 season, and as we have seen in the past, the combination of talented driver with the best team always tend to succeed. Freddie Slater will be surely one of the favourite contenders for the title, as we prepare to witness another generational talent race in the Formula 1 Feeder series.
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