Twenty-seven years of racing, 29 F1 graduates and 35 combined drivers’ and teams’ titles – and it all came to a screeching halt late last year when his co-owner fired him from the team he founded. As of today, 9 January, the junior single-seater outfit once known as Carlin Motorsport has officially become Rodin Motorsport after a partnership formed a year ago between team founder Trevor Carlin and Rodin director David Dicker turned sour over the course of 2023. Feeder Series uncovers the story.

By Michael McClure

Carlin, 60, was fired from his own team by Dicker, the CEO of New Zealand car manufacturer Rodin Cars, in November as a result of both professional disagreements and personal matters, Feeder Series understands following conversations with several sources.

Companies House records show that Carlin’s resignation was finalised on 8 November 2023, the same day that Rodin Motorsport Ltd filed new memorandum and articles of association documents. Those developments occurred less than two weeks after Rodin Cars general manager Emma Duncan was named as a director of the company on 27 October.

It was subsequently announced on 30 November that Carlin’s wife Stephanie Carlin, the team’s longtime commercial manager who most recently served as F3 and F1 Academy team principal, would leave the outfit in December for a role as business operations director at McLaren F1. Feeder Series understands that she was already set to leave the team before Trevor Carlin and Dicker fell out.

After Carlin ran Rodin-backed New Zealand drivers Liam Lawson and Louis Sharp in 2022, Rodin purchased an 80 percent stake in the team in January 2023, and the outfit was renamed from Carlin to Rodin Carlin. Dicker bought the shares that previously belonged to Capsicum Motorsport, a group controlled by entrepreneur Grahame Chilton, the father of longtime Carlin racer and former F1 and IndyCar driver Max Chilton.

That change in majority shareholding occurred on 16 January 2023, with the company name changed from Capsicum Motorsport Ltd to Rodin Motorsport Ltd on 5 May. Both Carlins remained at the helm of their eponymous team’s racing operations through that change.

Since Stephanie Carlin assumed the role of deputy team principal partway through 2022, she had travelled with the team to most F2 and F3 rounds while Trevor remained primarily in the United Kingdom. She has also served as team principal of Extreme E team X44, owned by seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton, since February of 2023.

Trevor Carlin remains the owner of four additional organisations bearing his name: Carlin Management Services Ltd, incorporated 9 May 2013; Carlin Performance Ltd, incorporated 22 July 2021; Carlin Performance Products Ltd, incorporated 4 May 2023; and Trevor Carlin Karting Ltd, incorporated 15 September 2023.

Stephanie Carlin had 50 percent ownership of Carlin Management Services Ltd and 1 percent ownership of Carlin Performance Ltd from their respective incorporations until 19 April 2023, when she resigned from both. She was never listed in an ownership or directorial role in conjunction with either of Carlin Performance Products Ltd or Trevor Carlin Karting Ltd, the latter of which is co-owned by Aytac “Tony” Irfan, father of 2023 Rodin Carlin British F4 driver Josh Irfan and owner of the KartSim karting simulator brand.

In addition to on-track racing ventures, the Carlins were contracted to run modified F2 cars for the filming of a forthcoming F1-themed movie directed by Joseph Kosinski and starring Brad Pitt as lead actor. Filming had taken place during the 2023 British Grand Prix weekend, though it reached a standstill in the second half of the year amid the SAG-AFTRA strike that affected Hollywood.

Feeder Series understands that the film project, commissioned by Apple Original Films, was a source of significant financial revenue for Carlin but not for Rodin or Dicker, which is believed to have deepened the rift between the pair.

While Carlin himself got a significant windfall from his side projects, the race team struggled. Sources indicated to Feeder Series that the cars had not been maintained consistently and that Carlin’s own house had been mortgaged to try to save the operation from an increasingly red balance sheet. 

Companies House records show that the team had lost more than £2 million total across 2021 and 2022 and had a negative account balance of £6,838,757 as of 31 December 2022. This was on top of more than £5.5 million lost in the period between 1 November 2013 and 31 October 2017, with only a few hundred thousand pounds recouped in the interim.

When reached by Feeder Series prior to the publication of the name change, a PR representative from Rodin Motorsport did not confirm the change in ownership, and a PR representative from Rodin Cars did not respond to Feeder Series’ request for comment. A press release accompanying the name change mentioned neither Trevor nor Stephanie Carlin.

Rodin: A brief history

Dicker, a 70-year-old amateur racer and entrepreneur from Australia, founded Rodin Cars in 2016 as the culmination of several years of work into the FZero concept sports car. The company also took over the Lotus T125 F1-style open-wheel project and completed it as the FZed a few years later.

The cars have been tested extensively at Rodin’s 550-hectare headquarters near the Mount Lyford ski resort on New Zealand’s South Island.

Beginning with W Series champion Jamie Chadwick in 2020, Rodin has also financially supported the careers of several young drivers. The most notable of these is Red Bull junior Lawson, who competed in five F1 grands prix in 2023 as a stand-in for the injured Daniel Ricciardo, himself a former Carlin driver, at Scuderia AlphaTauri.

Rodin first appeared on Carlin cars in 2022, when Lawson moved to the team from Hitech for F2 that year. Rodin also supported Carlin driver Sharp, another driver known to have a slim personal budget, as he stepped up from Formula First in New Zealand to British F4.

After becoming Rodin Carlin, the Farnham-based team also took on Rodin-backed Australians Costa Toparis for GB3 and Alex Ninovic for Spanish F4, to which the team had expanded for the 2023 season.

Rodin’s entrance into single-seater motorsport also took place with a view toward an eventual F1 berth. Dicker said in April that he had more than $500 million to support a Rodin F1 entry for 2026, but the FIA rejected its application, along with those of two other prospective applicants, in September.

In the wake of the rejection, Dicker said he had anticipated that Andretti Global’s application would be the only one advanced to the next stage and lamented that the team’s unconventional proposals – which included building its cars in New Zealand and reserving one seat for a female driver – were not enough to sway the FIA.

Elsewhere, Dicker had also investigated the prospect of buying Scuderia AlphaTauri, with which Lawson made his F1 debut, but deemed the idea commercially unviable.

Outside of motorsport, Dicker is the CEO of Australian information technology company Dicker Data, incorporated in 1978. Dicker Data had a revenue of AU$3.1 billion, equivalent to around £1.75 billion, in 2022.

Dicker, who is based in Dubai, was present at the Rodin Carlin garage in the F2 paddock at the 2023 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the team’s final race weekend under that name.

Carlin: A brief history

Rodin Motorsport was founded in 1996 as Carlin Motorsport by Trevor Carlin and Martin Stone and has been a fixture of the British and international junior single-seater ladders ever since. The team competed in F2, F3, GB3, British F4, F4 UAE, Spanish F4 and F1 Academy in 2023.

Carlin entered the British F3 Championship in 1997 and quickly became one of its most prominent teams, winning the drivers’ title in 2001, 2003, 2005 and every year from 2008 to 2013. The team also won races in Formula Renault 3.5 and the F3 Euro Series and took victory at the Macau Grand Prix in 2001, 2012 and 2016.

At the end of 2009, Grahame Chilton’s Capsicum Motorsport organisation – so named because capsicum is the genus of the chilli pepper, a homophone of Chilton’s nickname “Chilly” – became the majority shareholder of the team, renamed to Carlin, just before its entry into the new GP3 Series in 2010 and parent category GP2 in 2011. Chilton’s younger son Max Chilton raced for Carlin for two years in GP2 before he stepped up to Formula 1 in 2013, but the team reached its greatest success in the series afterwards, finishing second twice in GP2 in 2013 and 2014 and winning the 2014 GP3 teams’ title and drivers’ title with Alex Lynn.

In 2015, when Chilton left F1 for stateside competition, Carlin came with him, running a trio of cars in IndyCar feeder series Indy Lights for three years. Chilton moved up to IndyCar in 2016, the year that Carlin won the Lights title with Ed Jones, and the team then stepped up to IndyCar to run Chilton and several others from 2018 to 2021 until the British driver retired from the category in early 2022.

In the meantime, Carlin had scaled back its activities in mainland Europe, dropping out of both GP3 and Formula Renault 3.5 at the end of 2015 and GP2 at the end of 2016. The team did remain in European F3, winning the 2017 drivers’ title with Lando Norris, then joined the rebranded FIA F2 and FIA F3 series in 2018 and 2019 respectively as each series rolled out a new chassis.

The team has failed to score a win in five seasons of F3, but it has been a consistent frontrunner in F2, winning the teams’ title on debut in 2018 with Norris and Sérgio Sette Câmara and finishing in the top four every year since. Its drivers have also won five of the last seven titles in GB3, formerly known as BRDC British F3, as well as the series’ inaugural teams’ title in 2021.

More recently, Rodin Motorsport has broadened its F4-level activities beyond British F4, in which it won five drivers’ and six teams’ titles from 2015 to 2023. The team ran two cars in conjunction with Xcel Motorsport in F4 UAE last winter and established three-car teams in both Spanish F4 and the new all-female F1 Academy series, with Jessica Edgar taking the team’s first win in the latter series’ final round of 2023.

Rodin Motorsport had been planning a further expansion into the Eurocup-3 series, which shares much of its calendar with Spanish F4, though this may not materialise for 2024, Feeder Series understands.

Additional reporting by George Brabner

Header photo credit: Rodin Motorsport