AIX Racing’s Taylor Barnard joined us on the Feeder Series Podcast to talk us through how a career shaped by ambiguity has allowed him to become the youngest-ever Formula E driver.

By George Sanderson

At the 2024 Monaco ePrix, a young man from Norwich became the youngest-ever driver to start a Formula E race, aged just 19 years and 331 days. Taylor Barnard made history by replacing the injured Sam Bird, who had suffered a hand injury from a crash during practice.

Two weeks later, he made history again. With Bird still unable to race, Barnard took part in the Berlin ePrix double header and finished the first race in tenth place. This scored his first point in Formula E, making him the youngest-ever points scorer. He ended the weekend by finishing in eighth place in the second race, bringing his points tally to five.

It was a dream couple of rounds for the young Brit and, as he revealed on the Feeder Series Podcast, one that he had very little time to prepare for.

“I’ve found myself jumping between many different cars and just having to be quick straightaway because I’ve not had the time to do the testing and build up to the pace,” Barnard said. “Being in that kind of position as a reserve driver, I think it was definitely, the way my career has shaped out, it definitely prepared me for that kind of situation.”

Ambiguity and last-minute calls

Barnard speaks of almost feeling comfortable with uncertainty when it came to being thrown in at the deep end with his Formula E debut at Monaco. This sensation, however, has plagued much of his career to date.

“It’s been the same for my whole career,” he tells us. “Every time I get to the end of the year, I don’t know if I’m actually driving again the next year.” 2024 was another example of this, as Barnard describes how the current season began with an unexpected upgrade.

“I thought I was going to be doing F3 with AIX now. But I got to one week before the Bahrain test and I ended up doing F2. So yeah, that was the last-minute call of last-minute calls!”

He jumped at the opportunity, saying that his attitude to such decisions is always, “Okay, I’ll take on the challenge.”

“We knew it was going to be a tough season anyway in F3, so to make the step up it would’ve been a really steep learning curve, which it has been so far for me.” Barnard took time to adjust to the new F2 car, retiring in the sprint race at Bahrain and not picking up any points until his sprint race victory at Monaco in the ninth race of the season.

The tradition of last-minute decisions began before this season. Barnard recalls the 2021 season when he was competing with BWR Motorsports in ADAC Formula 4. During this period, a late decision helped him to kick on.

“I did only half the season [with BWR Motorsports] and we had no money to do any testing or something. I finished all of them races last by the way, so that was a really tough start to my car career.

“And then over the winter, it was PHM at the time, messaged me and said ‘Do I want to go to the UAE to do a test?’ and we were like, ‘Yeah, I’d love to, but we can’t afford to do that because we don’t have the money’.”

PHM Racing, now PHM AIX Racing in Formula 4 and Formula Regional championships, paid for Barnard to travel to the UAE and complete the testing program. He impressed enough to be given a seat with the team for the F4 UAE Championship, in which he returned them one victory and a ninth-place finish in the drivers’ standings.

These performances handed him drives for 2022, again with PHM Racing, in the Italian and German F4 championships, where he was runner-up in the latter. Then, in 2023, he was runner-up in the Formula Regional Middle East Championship, finishing 40 points behind Andrea Kimi Antonelli, before Jenzer Motorsport offered him a seat in F3.

“All of them things which ended up happening were very last minute, with not much preparation, but I think that it’s kind of been the same thing for my whole career, that it’s always been last-minute.”

How has that affected his career?

Unsurprisingly, Barnard believes that the nature of his career so far has left him regularly unprepared when a season starts, negatively affecting his results at the start of a season by being at a disadvantage to the other drivers.

“[The] first three or four rounds or so [of the 2023 F3 season] were not the best, we’d got off to a bit of a slow start. But after the in-season tests at Barcelona and Imola, we definitely made some big steps forward.”

At the fourth round of the season in Barcelona, Barnard secured second place in qualifying, a quarter of a second behind pole-sitter Pepe Martí, demonstrating pace which was “significantly better than the previous races.” However, he admits that he “struggled quite a lot in the races there” after finishing ninth in both the feature and sprint race, despite starting from the front row in the feature race.

Some bad luck followed him in the next rounds at Great Britain and Hungary, whilst teammate Nikita Bedrin picked up a podium, proving “we did have the potential to actually get on the podium and get some really big points-paying positions.”

Barnard’s progress over the season shone through in the final two rounds at Spa-Francorchamps and Monza. By finishing all four races (both sprints and features) inside the top four, he scored big points to close out the season in tenth place in the drivers’ standings.

“Obviously Spa, the sprint I finished second which was, I think, on merit. You know, it was slicks in the rain. I started close to the front so that was the kind of race that it was. And it was a really good result to get my first podium.

“I did not expect the win the day after,” Barnard smiles. “Starting from P10, we made a bit of a gamble to go on wet tyres. I think I did try to persuade my engineer a little bit to go on to wets because… you know, I said to my engineer actually on the radio that we’d had a great day the day before, we had some great points, we have nothing to lose, let’s just go for it!”

Barnard carried the good form to Monza, securing a third and fourth-place finish in the feature and sprint race respectively, ending the season with the most points of any driver across the final two rounds.

However, by having to take time to adapt to a new championship while the season has already begun, Barnard acknowledges he is at a disadvantage when it comes to being in a strong position for discussions about seats the following year.

“I think definitely it helps if you perform really, really strongly in the first five or six rounds, definitely it does help your situation for the next season.” This is an opinion backed by Sven Smeets, head of the Williams Racing Driver Academy, who joined us on the 5 June episode of the Feeder Series Podcast.

Smeets told us that the “conversations for seats for next year normally start around Silverstone”, meaning that in F3, Barnard wouldn’t have had a podium finish by the time discussions were beginning. His best results by Silverstone had been a fifth place in the Monaco sprint, as well as four other points-scoring finishes.

“I’ve never been in the kind of position to have the good preparation for the season to then be strong at the beginning,” Barnard explains. “I think also it depends on the kind of team that you’re with. If you gel with them really good, very quickly. It also helps to be very strong at the start of the season.”

This quick bonding with a team is something he believes he lacked at Jenzer Motorsport, saying “We didn’t get the click at the beginning, which maybe- perhaps hurt our performance a little bit at the start.”

Spending 2024 with AIX and McLaren

Barnard tells us that the move to become the reserve and development driver for the NEOM McLaren Formula E team was a “mutual agreement between PHM, at the time, and McLaren.”

“They were talking about the reserve driver role and doing potentially some testing, which I did in Valencia – the rookie test. Then, after the rookie test, I did more simulator and then I ended up becoming the reserve driver.”

Barnard believes that, after talking with his personal team around him, it would be “a great step in my career to learn off guys like that [Jake Hughes and Sam Bird] and to do the testing in that kind of car [the Formula E car] with that competition of the championship.”

He describes it as a move that “made complete sense to do that as the next step in my career.”

Another move that seemed to just make sense to Barnard was returning to AIX Racing, formerly PHM Racing. It is something of a homecoming, having known a lot of the team members from when he was originally with them in 2022.

“I think some of the main people in the team, or within AIX, are still the same, which I’ve known all of the guys for many, many years. So, it definitely does feel like coming home for a little bit.”

The reunion started with a strong second campaign in the Formula Regional Middle East Championship, where he again finished second overall, 79 points behind Tuukka Taponen.

“I hope we can continue the trend of winning like we did [last time they worked together] because to win with that kind of team around me, and with them kind of people, it does feel absolutely amazing.”

You can hear more from Taylor Barnard on the 12 June episode of the Feeder Series Podcast, hosted by Jim Kimberley.

Header photo credit: McLaren Racing