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Barnard looks to become Formula E's youngest winner on 21st birthday
Taylor Barnard’s debut Formula E campaign keeps going from strength to strength. Coming into the year, people knew he’d be decent – two points finishes during a brief cameo last season standing in for the injured Sam Bird showed promise – but he’s massively outperformed any expectations so far.
NEOM McLaren's youngster has already had two poles, and every time he's finished in the points, he's been on the podium – five times from 10 races so far.
Adding to that has been a brace of fastest laps from teammate Bird, helping the team to its best season under the McLaren moniker.
“It's an incredible start that we've had, not just myself, but the team as well,” said Barnard. “I think the steps they've made from last year as a team have been incredible and obviously, in my first season, I couldn't ask for much more than what we're having right now.
“Today was a great test to the strengths of everyone in the team, because we dropped back right to the back of the field at the beginning of the race, and the strategy and everything that the team have done was incredible to get me back onto the podium. Big thanks to them.”
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Barnard holds records for the youngest points scorer, youngest polesitter, and youngest podium finisher, leaving the youngest race winner as the last item to check off on his list. On Sunday he turns 21 and he’s optimistic he can give himself the perfect birthday present.
“I've got a few records at the moment, and that's the one that I'm missing, so I'm definitely wanting to get that one on my 21st birthday,” he said. “[It] would be even better.
“Tomorrow is going to be wet, so we've already had a podium in those conditions, and I think we were quite strong in terms of pace, so we're hoping for more of that."
Formula E's current youngest race winner is Maximilian Guenther, who won Saturday’s race for DS Penske. Guenther was 22 years, 200 days old at the 2020 Santiago E-Prix when he took the record, and given Barnard’s youth and strong performances already, he’s confident the Brit will overhaul him before too long.
“Taylor is doing an incredible job this year,” said Guenther. “He's very, very young still, so I'm highly confident [he’s] going to get my records very soon.
“I hope not tomorrow, because we’ll try to do a good race as well, but I'm confident [he’s] going to get it soon.”
Dominik Wilde
Dominik often jokes that he was born in the wrong country – a lover of NASCAR and IndyCar, he covered both in a past life as a junior at Autosport in the UK, but he’s spent most of his career to date covering the sliding and flying antics of the U.S.’ interpretation of rallycross. Rather fitting for a man that says he likes “seeing cars do what they’re not supposed to do”, previously worked for a car stunt show, and once even rolled a rally car with Travis Pastrana. He was also comprehensively beaten in a kart race by Sebastien Loeb once, but who hasn’t been?
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