Yes, the headline to this feature may sound like a bold claim. And, yes, we are talking about a driver with only one full season of car racing under their belt. But there’s undoubtedly something special about Freddie Slater’s glittering career to date.
It’s rare for a driver to combine remarkable talent behind the wheel – a plethora of top karting titles and his domination of the Ginetta Junior field last year demonstrate that – with the right backing and people around them to make it all the way to the very top of the sport. Slater ticks all of those boxes, and that’s what makes him such an exciting prospect.
It’s certainly no surprise that the 15-year-old has entered the world of motorsport. His father Adrian – managing director of luxury bath and beauty brand Baylis & Harding and a huge supporter of UK racing, who donated tens of thousands of bottles of hand sanitiser to Motorsport UK during the pandemic – is a long-time Porsche competitor, and Slater’s godfather is another leading figure in the Porsche world, Mark Sumpter. Slater Jr therefore grew up around motorsport and soon began karting.
“I got my first go-kart when I just turned five and I loved it so much and I started racing,” he recalls. “It’s mad to think where I started and the level where I’m at now – I never expect things too much. I started getting good results in Cadets and it started to rocketship from there. It’s been a hell of a journey.”
That journey has taken him around the globe, and Slater has enjoyed karting success on the American, European and World stage. One of his most notable achievements was becoming the 2020 Junior World Karting champion, defeating Formula 1 team juniors Arvid Lindblad and Ugo Ugochukwu. His karting glory even continued into last year – alongside his Ginetta Junior competition, he secured the European KZ2 crown in summer 2023.
Given all that success, there was, unsurprisingly, already a lot of hype surrounding Slater when he made his Ginetta debut with the leading R Racing squad at Snetterton in 2022, the sixth round of the season. But, considering his rivals had at least half a year of car racing experience – some far more – a best result of seventh hinted at Slater’s potential. He does admit, though, that the switch from karts to cars was tricky to begin with.
“The Ginetta Junior car is so sensitive, also it’s not got a lot of power and it’s on road tyres so it’s really hard to drive,” states Slater. “The transition to cars is a completely different ballgame because everything is so different. When I moved out of karting, I thought I could take a few things – and you can take the general feeling of what the car’s doing and a bit of racecraft – but, otherwise, you have to learn from scratch again. I did the last three rounds and we were OK but I wasn’t mega in qualifying.”
R Racing team boss Jamie Ross acknowledges Slater did struggle a little to begin with, but says this was just “about needing more seat time in the car” and adapting to the differences from karting. And it all clicked for the Winter Series at Brands Hatch, where he won three of the four races to become the youngest-ever Ginetta Junior victor and seal the title.
“I was in the zone and the team was doing well,” reckons Slater. “I stepped up to another level and started to get into a rhythm without making those little mistakes.” For his rivals, it provided a worrying hint of what was to come.
Ginetta Junior has never featured domination on quite the scale Slater produced last year. He won 16 of the 21 races he started – and could have topped another two but for track-limits penalties – to wrap up the championship with effectively two events to spare. He picks out his Cadwell Park triumphs as among his favourites, describing the Lincolnshire venue as “an insane track for a Ginetta Junior”. It may not have been the strongest of seasons as the series moved away from its home on the British Touring Car bill to join the British GT package, but Slater’s consistency for a driver still aged 14 was remarkable.
"I’ve been speaking to quite a few people about my F4 races and people from inside my team think I’ve done a good job but that wasn’t enough for me. I don’t want to finish third if I can go for a win – it’s better taking my front wing off and learning from it than finishing third" Freddie Slater
“We’ve had so many standout drivers through the years, like Zak O’Sullivan, who was driving in F1 the other weekend [in Abu Dhabi for Williams], but Freddie is just exceptional,” says Ross. “The pole margins he’s had are just unbelievable. Normally, if you see this dominance in a single-make series, there’s questions about ‘is the team cheating?’ but everyone knows how good Freddie is.
“I think the standout for me was qualifying at Silverstone, when he put it on pole by 2.4 seconds – it was absolutely ridiculous! From memory, he was on pole by about a second and me and Craig [Boyd, Slater’s performance coach] were watching and were like, ‘that’s good’ and he then went purple again. There’s never a sense of ‘that will do now’, it’s always ‘I can do better’!”
Further evidence of that impressive attitude comes when Slater discusses his season and admits to being disappointed to not contest the final two events – so he could instead progress to single-seaters – as he missed out on the chance of adding further wins and making his new records even tougher to beat! But, despite his domination, Slater says he “still learned so much” that he is already putting to good use as he moves further up the ranks.
That next step came in August when he made his Formula 4 debut in the British series with the returning Double R squad at Donington Park. Although Slater had already completed numerous test sessions, it was another sign of his ability that he jumped straight into the series and twice qualified third. He was battling for the win in the finale when slight contact damaged his wing, but he had looked completely at home in the slicks-and-wings machinery.
“If I didn’t do Ginetta, I don’t think I would’ve been as good as I’ve been in F4 at the start,” Slater reckons. He has also been among the frontrunners in Euro 4 and Italian F4 races he has contested in Europe, with Prema and Van Amersfoort Racing respectively, although there have been a few little scrapes as well.
“I’ve been speaking to quite a few people about my F4 races and people from inside my team think I’ve done a good job but that wasn’t enough for me,” shrugs Slater, showing a level of self-reflection that belies his age. “I don’t want to finish third if I can go for a win – it’s better taking my front wing off and learning from it than finishing third. But when you’re fighting for a championship, then it’s better picking up the points.”
But Slater’s most impressive F4 performance to date has to have been at Macau. He was second in the qualification race and was hounding leader and Prema team-mate Lindblad in the main contest when what Slater describes as a “tiny” failure cost him vital performance.
“It was an incredible experience – I will never forget that,” he enthuses. “It’s the most insane weekend, at 0730 they had all filled the stands! I put in a good lap in qualifying and the qualification race was wet, and I was watching in front and Arvid was definitely pushing quite a lot because, by the time we got to Turn 9, we had nearly a three-second gap to the car behind. You can’t crash at Macau so my aim was to build it up to the GP. We went into another level – we had so much pace and so I was gutted to go out like that. But that’s motorsport, things break.”
Slater’s most recent F4 outing came in support of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – he took a podium – and the event has only made him more determined to be one day racing on the main stage.
“It’s driven me even more to be in F1 because I saw it and that’s absolutely where I want to be,” he states. “Before that, I didn’t know how good it was because I hadn’t been to a grand prix. I didn’t get involved in the F1 paddock but just watching the cars go round I was in love at that point. F1 is my goal – that’s where I want to be. That’s my dream and I’m going to do my best to make my dream into reality.”
And Slater has some people around him who know exactly what it takes to do just that. He is guided by ADD Management, headed by Mark Berryman and Fraser Sheader, and they have already completed the same journey with Lando Norris. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without them,” acknowledges Slater. “I hope to pay everything back to them.”
Alongside his parents, he also highlights Boyd – who he has worked with since the age of seven – as being a key element to his success.
“Everyone speaks of Freddie as an individual but I think Freddie Slater is a team of people,” adds Ross. “It’s the effort that everyone has put in, his management, his performance coach Craig Boyd – everything has no stone unturned. There’s no other goal but to make an F1 driver out of him. There’s no arrogance about it, but just so much confidence.”
Yet, before Slater can think about F1, there are several more steps on the single-seater ladder to climb first. The likely next stage is the UAE F4 championship and Slater wants to adopt the same approach as he did with Ginetta Junior, where he used his 2022 outings to learn and make some mistakes ready to attack from the start of the new season. He has also been announced for Prema's Italian F4 and Euro 4 programmes, with more set to be added.
Historically, Ginetta Junior champions are not even nominated for the Award, let alone win it, and this again shows he is one to watch
And he will go into them with another confidence boost, after defeating strong opposition to be voted by Autosport readers as 2023's National Driver of the Year award winner. His rivals included Ash Sutton who, like Slater, enjoyed a remarkable campaign in winning a fourth BTCC title. Sutton has completed some driver coaching with R Racing and the duo’s paths have crossed.
“I’ve tested with Ash in Ginetta Junior and he’s an incredible and amazing guy,” says Slater, who also has ambitions to tackle the endurance racing scene in the future. “I turned up to my table at the Awards and I’m sitting next to Ash the whole night! We were winding each other up about who wins!”
Historically, Ginetta Junior champions are not even nominated for the Award, let alone win it, and this again shows he is one to watch. And speaking of possible future stars, Ross reveals that Slater’s younger brother Alfie has now begun Ginetta Junior testing as he seeks to follow in his successful sibling’s footsteps…
