After finishing his sole Formula 2 season in fourth, Luke Browning departed the European continent for Super Formula. It’s a nontraditional move, but ahead of his first F1 free practice session of the year, he told Feeder Series why he thinks it could help him get to a race seat in the pinnacle of motorsport. 

By Calla Kra-Caskey 

Should Browning get a full-season F1 seat next year and make his debut at the Australian Grand Prix, he’d be 25 years old – the oldest rookie since Nyck De Vries made his ill-fated F1 attempt in 2023. 

He’d also be one of just three drivers on the grid this decade to have stepped up from Super Formula. Liam Lawson and Pierre Gasly took second in the series in 2023 and 2017 respectively before becoming late-season substitutes in F1 for Red Bull–affiliated teams. Unlike Browning, Gasly had won GP2 the year prior, so he wasn’t eligible to return to the series, rebranded to F2 in 2017. Lawson, meanwhile, did two seasons of F2 before making the switch to Super Formula. 

So why did Browning, who certainly could’ve been an F2 title favourite in 2026 as the best-placed returning driver, head for Japan instead? 

“The point at which we made the decision not to go back to Formula 2 was at the point that I was leading the championship,” Browning told Feeder Series. “I was leading in Formula 2 at this point last year. And this is the sort of time that you’re deciding what you need to do next year, especially as a junior driver, because the seats get filled up very quickly, especially if you want to be with a good team.” 

Browning led the championship for a single round last year, after Monaco, the fifth event of the season. But with five podiums to his name by that point and nine by the end of the season, he was competitive enough that winning the title and not being able to return was a real possibility. 

Ultimately, it didn’t go his way. Leonardo Fornaroli sealed the title at the penultimate round in Qatar, and although Browning remained in contention for the runner-up spot, he finished the season in fourth after having his only non-scoring weekend of the season in Abu Dhabi. 

Still, he told Feeder Series that weekend that he was hopefully ’Formula 1–ready or knocking on the doorstep’. The Williams F1 Team Driver Academy top brass agreed, entrusting him with a reserve role for the 2026 season. Along with working on the simulator, his duties include several rookie FP1 sessions, with two scheduled for the Barcelona round last weekend and the Spielberg round this coming weekend. 

“I think James [Vowles] and Sven [Smeets] decided that I did a good enough job to be warranted the reserve seat for the following year and therefore whatever I needed to do to support that, and that ended up being Super Formula in the end,” he reflected ahead of his Barcelona appearance.

“We were tossing between a lot of things, whether just to do testing a little bit like Piastri did for his year or Paul Aron’s done over the last couple of years. But I think I wanted to keep racing, I wanted to keep fresh, and I didn’t want any cobwebs on my racecraft. 

“I think there’s definitely something about being race fit, isn’t there? You know, driving the car every other week and still having the pressure on, when the lights go out, to perform.”

Browning has certainly been putting his racecraft to use across the first four races of the Super Formula season. In a start to the season he characterised as ’very good considering the team that we’ve had and the success that they maybe wanted to achieve last year’ – his Kondo Racing squad haven’t finished in the top five in the championship since 2022 – Browning has finished fourth twice despite never qualifying above 14th. 

“Honestly, it’s probably not too important for me this year how the results go over there,” he said. “It’s more of just a learning curve, and we’re sacrificing qualifying laps and preparation to do set-up changes that are not necessarily going to be any helpful to performance but are going to be helpful for me before going into Formula 1.” 

That is, Browning seems to be using his Super Formula jaunt as one long free practice session for an F1 career that he thinks could emerge in the near future. 

As for his actual free practice sessions for Williams in 2026, there’s a careful balance to strike. 

“Obviously it’s important,” he said. “The FP1 sessions, it’s my one opportunity to, or a couple opportunities to show that, yeah, okay, we’re in the car and that I’m ready if I’m needed. But equally, I’m there to bring the car home safe and I’m there to test the items that need to be tested.”

In Spain, when he filled in for Alex Albon for FP1, it came to naught. An electrical failure on the FW48 that Browning was set to drive meant he saw no running around the Barcelona circuit – the life of an F1 driver under the new set of regulations. 

He’ll get another chance to show his mettle in five days’ time in practice one for the Austrian Grand Prix, taking place Friday at 13:30 local, when he takes over Carlos Sainz’ car. 

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency