Rodin Motorsport (formerly known as Carlin Motorsport, Carlin and Rodin Carlin) is a motor racing team based in the United Kingdom. It currently competes in six championships: FIA Formula 2 Championship, FIA Formula 3 Championship, GB3 Championship, F1 Academy, F4 British Championship and Spanish F4 Championship.
Originally founded in 1996 by Trevor Carlin and Martin Stone, Carlin has competed in Porsche Supercup, Nissan World Series, Formula BMW UK, World Series by Renault, F3 Euro Series, British F3, FIA European F3 Championship, FIA Formula E, GP3 Series, GP2 Series all with race winning success.
In 2009, Carlin Motorsport was reborn as Carlin, part of the Capsicum Motorsport Group headed up by Grahame Chilton and Rupert Swallow. In 2023, New Zealand-based manufacturer Rodin Cars became the majority shareholder following investment from founder David Dicker, in a deal that saw the team rebrand as Rodin Carlin.[1] [2] Trevor and Stephanie Carlin both departed the team in late 2023, with Dicker taking over fully and renaming the company Rodin Motorsport.[3] [4]
Carlin has provided a well-trodden staircase to F1. Over 200 drivers have passed through the doors of the team, many on their way to the highest echelons of the sport, including F1 drivers Sebastian Vettel, Nico Rosberg, Robert Kubica, Takuma Sato, Anthony Davidson, Jaime Alguersuari, Daniel Ricciardo, Max Chilton, Jean-Éric Vergne, Kevin Magnussen, Felipe Nasr, Narain Karthikeyan, Rio Haryanto, George Russell, Carlos Sainz Jr. and Lando Norris. Other notable Carlin drivers are Josef Newgarden, Patricio O'Ward, Conor Daly, Jamie Green, Oliver Jarvis, Oliver Turvey, Álvaro Parente, Charlie Kimball, Robert Wickens, Sérgio Sette Câmara and Ed Jones.
Founded in 1996 as Carlin Motorsport, for the 2010 season, the team underwent a restructuring, with a significant investment from Grahame Chilton's Capsicum Motorsport. The team became known as simply Carlin, who sought the partnership in order to secure the long-term future of the team.[5]
In the 2005-06 A1 Grand Prix season, Carlin were contracted to run the Lebanon,[6] Portugal[7] and Japan entries.The team stuck with just the Lebanon team for the 2006–07 and 2007–08 seasons before switching to the Korea team in 2008–09 before the series folded next season.
The team has been competing in the British Formula 3 Championship since 1997. The team achieved their first victory with Narain Karthikeyan in 1999 and since 2001, has won 9 championships to become the most successful team in British F3 history. The champions are Takuma Sato (2001), Alan van der Merwe (2003), Álvaro Parente (2005), Jaime Alguersuari (2008), Daniel Ricciardo (2009), Jean-Éric Vergne (2010), Felipe Nasr (2011) Jack Harvey (2012), Jordan King (2013) and Enaam Ahmed (2017).
Carlin joined the Formula 3 Euro Series in 2008. In 2012, after poor results in the first three seasons, William Buller finished fifth and Carlos Sainz Jr. finished ninth. Carlin also entered the 2012 FIA European Formula 3 Championship, where Sainz finished fifth and Buller sixth.
In the 2013 FIA European Formula 3 Championship, Harry Tincknell was fifth and Jordan King was sixth. In 2014, Antonio Giovinazzi finished sixth, King seventh and Jake Dennis ninth. In 2015, Giovinazzi was runner-up and George Russell finished sixth. 2016 was a rough year for Carlin as none of its drivers finished in top 10 in the series.
However, in 2017, Lando Norris won the FIA European Formula 3 Championship as a rookie driver with Carlin, making Carlin the only team other than Prema to ever win the title in this series. Jehan Daruvala finished sixth and Ferdinand Habsburg was seventh. 2018 was the final year of FIA European Formula 3 Championship, in which Daruvala was tenth, Sacha Fenestraz was eleventh and Habsburg was thirteenth.
Carlin has entered the Formula 3 Macau Grand Prix since 1998. Takuma Sato won in 2001, Robert Kubica was second in 2005, Sébastien Buemi was fourth in 2006, Brendon Hartley was third in 2008, Felipe Nasr was second in 2011, António Félix da Costa was first in 2012 and again in 2016, and Antonio Giovinazzi was fourth in 2015.
The team has been contesting in the series since 2003, and have won a race in the series every year since then. The team has won two drivers titles and one team championship.The champions are Mikhail Aleshin and Robert Wickens in 2010 and 2011 respectively.
Carlin took a year sabbatical in 2014 due to driver and budgetary issues.[8] They returned in 2015, replacing Czech outfit ISR Racing, before withdrawing once again after the series lost its Renault backing. Carlin was replaced in the 2016 Formula V8 3.5 Championship by RP Motorsport.[9]
The team joined the GP3 Series in 2010 for its inaugural season, which it finished 5th in the championship with 42 points overall. In its second season in 2011, the team finished 9th overall. In the 2012 the team finished third in the teams' standings and third in the drivers' championship after a strong season from António Félix da Costa and teammates Alex Brundle and Will Buller. Carlin were fourth in the teams' standings at the end of the 2013 season whilst Arden's Daniil Kvyat claimed the Driver's Championship. The following year, they claimed the Constructor's title in addition to Red Bull Junior driver Alex Lynn's title win. For the 2015 season, Jann Mardenborough, Mitch Gilbert and Ferrari Academy driver Antonio Fuoco will race for Carlin.
At the end of the 2015 season, Carlin withdrew from the series.
The team joined the GP2 Series in 2011 for the first time. The team's lead driver was Max Chilton—a former Carlin driver in British F3—whilst the second seat was initially taken by Mikhail Aleshin, who had won the Formula Renault 3.5 Series championship with the team the previous year. He soon ran out of financial support and was replaced by Oliver Turvey (another former Carlin driver in other series), who made a one-off appearance before being replaced in turn by Álvaro Parente (the 2005 British F3 champion with Carlin).
For the 2012 season, the team formed a partnership with the Marussia Formula One team. Chilton retained his seat and improved dramatically, taking two race victories on his way to fourth place in the drivers' championship. His teammate was Rio Haryanto, promoted from the Marussia-backed Manor Motorsport GP3 Series team. He finished 14th in the championship with a pole position and a fastest lap, and Carlin improved to fifth place in the teams' championship.
In the 2013 season, Carlin improved once again with drivers Felipe Nasr and Jolyon Palmer, taking two wins in total and nine podiums. Nasr was a contender for the drivers' title up until the final stages of the season. An eventful season finale saw the team lose out on the teams' championship to Russian Time, with both finishing on equal points but Russian Time taking more wins over the course of the season.
Nasr left the team at the end of the 2014 season to race for Sauber in Formula One, while his co-driver Julián Leal was retained for 2015 and paired with Marco Sorensen. The team struggled throughout the season (often having to change drivers) and finished 9th overall, marking the first time since 2012 that Carlin failed to finish in the top two.
Carlin signed Marvin Kirchhofer and Sergio Canamasas for the 2016 season and finished tenth in the standings. The team withdrew from the series the following year.
On 1 November 2014, Carlin announced that the team would be joining the U.S. IndyCar feeder series, Indy Lights. They will start racing in the 2015 Indy Lights season, operating out of a new U.S. base in Poughkeepsie, New York. Dallara, AER and Cooper will be suppliers to the series, companies which Carlin has experience working with from previous series.
Ed Jones moved to Carlin's Indy Lights team in 2015 after driving in their Formula 3 efforts.[10] He was joined in Carlin's debut season by former Formula 1 drivers and Carlin graduates Max Chilton and temporarily Nelson Piquet Jr.
2016 saw Jones continue with the team, partnered by Félix Serrallés and Neil Alberico. Jones took the drivers championship on the season, while Carlin won the teams championship.
2017 saw only Alberico remain, while Zachary Claman DeMelo, Matheus Leist, and Garth Rickards joined the team. The highlight of the season was Leist winning the Freedom 100. Following the 2017 season, Carlin ended its Indy Lights program to focus on joining the IndyCar Series from 2018.
However, the team announced a return to the series for the 2021 season, becoming a part of the Jay Howard Driver Development ladder, with Alex Peroni and a yet to be announced driver forming their two car entry[11]
In April 2006, Trevor Carlin confirmed that the team had applied for a place in the Formula One World Championship from the 2008 season,[12] although this was later rejected, in favour of the Prodrive F1 application. They were linked with applying again in 2011, but the team denied this insisting it was concentrating on success in the junior formulas.[13]
In 2014, Carlin announced that they had teamed up with Surrey-based simulator experience company, Lets Race. Open to any driver over 16, Lets Race to Reality's first round is held at the Lets Race simulator facility in Horley. The winners of the first round are invited to a karting event at Buckmore Park kart circuit in Kent, before a final selection process at Carlin's factory in Farnham. Finalists take part in various exercises, including a session in the team's professional simulator with a race engineer. The candidates then take part in an interview process with racing professionals, including Trevor Carlin and John Surtees. The winner of the event will receive a full day's testing in a Formula 3 car at Pembrey Circuit in Wales.
Piers Prior won the first competition in 2014, and completed his test at Pembrey in Jake Dennis' car.
In 2014, Carlin became the technical service provider of Mahindra Racing, running the outfit for the 2014–15 Formula E season.[14] Mahindra and Carlin split, and Mahindra have since partnered with Spanish team Campos Racing.[15]
In December 2017, Carlin announced it would enter the IndyCar Series beginning with the 2018 season with two full-time entries that would be driven by two of its former drivers from Formula 3, Max Chilton and Charlie Kimball.[16] Carlin's entry to the IndyCar Series marked the team's debut in a non-junior open wheel formula, fulfilling a long-held dream for the team.[17] At the end of the 2021 season, Carlin pulled out of the series and sold its assets to Juncos Hollinger Racing.[18]
In 2018, Carlin joined FIA Formula 2 Championship, after withdrawing from the year before.[19] They grabbed the teams' title from their first attempt with Sérgio Sette Câmara and Lando Norris. In the drivers' championship, Norris finished in 2nd place and Sérgio Sette Câmara was in sixth. In 2019 Nobuharu Matsushita and Louis Delétraz represented the Carlin team and finished sixth and eighth respectively. 2020 saw another good results for Carlin, as their rookie driver Yuki Tsunoda finished in 3rd place in the drivers' championship and Carlin finished in third in teams' championship with four race wins to its name. Jehan Daruvala was in twelfth. Daruvala was retained for the 2021 season and Dan Ticktum joined the team to replace F1-bound Yuki Tsunoda.[20] [21]
In October 2018, Carlin was listed as one of ten teams that would participate in the inaugural FIA Formula 3 Championship.[22] In January 2019, Carlin entered into a partnership with Japanese investment firm Buzz, with the Honda-backed Teppei Natori joining their Formula 3 team as part of the deal, and partook in the Japanese Formula 3 Championship in collaboration with OIRC team YTB, fielding French driver Charles Milesi.[23] [24] In 2020 Carlin achieved their first podium in F3 with Clement Novalak who finished 12th in the standings.
Having previously run Sascha Maassen in the 2001 Porsche Supercup,[25] Carlin made a long-awaited return to sportscars by entering the 2019 European Le Mans Series LMP2 category with the only Dallara P217 on the grid.[26] Piloting the #45 would be Jack Manchester, Harry Tincknell and Ben Barnicoat, with Olivier Pla[27] and Harrison Newey featuring as one off replacements across the season.[28]
Carlin became the first team to announce their participation in the eSkootr Championship (eSc), an international electric racing scooter series, and the team's first involvement in a two-wheeled series.[29]
In 2023, Lewis Hamilton's X44 will partner with Carlin for the 2023 season and will be led by team principal Stephanie Carlin.[30]
See main article: Carlin race results.
| Current series | ||
|---|---|---|
| F4 British Championship | 2015–2017, 2019–present | |
| GB3 Championship | 2016–present | |
| FIA Formula 2 Championship | 2018–present | |
| FIA Formula 3 Championship | 2019–present | |
| F4 Spanish Championship | 2023–present | |
| Extreme E | 2023–present | |
| F1 Academy | 2023–present | |
| Formula Winter Series | 2024–present | |
| Former series | ||
| British Formula Three Championship | 1997–2014 | |
| Porsche Supercup | 2001 | |
| World Series by Nissan | 2003–2004 | |
| Formula BMW UK | 2004–2007 | |
| 3000 Pro Series | 2005 | |
| Italian Formula Three Championship | 2005 | |
| A1 Grand Prix | 2005–2009 | |
| Formula Renault 3.5 Series | 2005–2013, 2015 | |
| Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 | 2007 | |
| British Formula Renault Championship | 2007 | |
| Formula 3 Euro Series | 2008–2009, 2011–2012 | |
| GP3 Series | 2010–2015 | |
| GP2 Asia Series | 2011 | |
| GP2 Series | 2011–2016 | |
| FIA Formula 3 European Championship | 2012–2018 | |
| Formula E | 2014–2015 | |
| Indy Lights | 2015–2017, 2021 | |
| Euroformula Open Championship | 2016–2021 | |
| IndyCar Series | 2018–2021 | |
| Japanese Formula 3 Championship | 2019 | |
| European Le Mans Series | 2019 | |
| Asian Le Mans Series | 2019–2020 | |
| ESkootr Championship | 2022 | |
| Formula 4 UAE Championship | 2023 | |
Rodin Motorsport
Arthur Rogeon