When Noah Lisle finished seventh overall in GB3 last year, few watching would have expected him to be out of a full-time race seat in 2026 – yet things panned out differently. On his first time back at a race weekend this year, Lisle took some time to tell Feeder Series his story of talent overridden by financial and personal turmoil – an all-too-common challenge for young drivers on the racing ladder.

By Archie Harper

Starting his single-seater career four years ago with a British F4 campaign with JHR Developments, Lisle had seemed to make steady improvements year on year.

He finished 13th in the British F4 standings that year and 10th with three wins in 2023, scoring more than three times as many points as in 2022. His parallel Spanish F4 campaign in 2023, which yielded an 11th-place finish overall, was followed by a 12th-place finish in his maiden Eurocup-3 campaign in 2024. The Australian then enjoyed a stronger run in GB3 in 2025, achieving four podiums on his way to seventh in the standings and setting up a potential title run in the series this year.

Lisle began the next step in his career by testing GB3 cars with teams’ championship runners-up Hitech, with whom he had signed over the winter. In the build-up to his campaign, Lisle tested with the squad at Snetterton and Silverstone in March, finishing seventh and fifth overall across the two days at Snetterton and ninth and eleventh overall at Silverstone.

And then it all stopped.

Almost all drivers on the junior ladder rely on support from their families, which means unexpected life events – the kind that would be challenging for anyone – risk directly impacting a driver’s career and ambitions.

Unexpected funding shortfalls stemming from his parents’ divorce meant 19-year-old Lisle could not take up his GB3 seat with Hitech. In an announcement on social media on 14 April, two weeks before the season began, Lisle wrote that he would not take part in GB3 because of ongoing financial and personal problems. Lisle himself learnt of the scale of the financial situation on 26 March, 19 days prior to his announcement – meaning his planned second GB3 season had been derailed just a month before it was meant to begin.

“It’s pretty disheartening because it was nothing to do with my driving or anything like that … even if there were things that I could’ve done like getting better results, and that sort of thing, to attract sponsors,” he told Feeder Series.

“You look at most sports and you’re not really evaluated for this sort of thing until your early to mid-20s, where in racing, if you don’t have it figured out by the time you’re 17 or 18, you’re pretty much written off.

“It’s a very harsh reality of it, and then it’s not that you don’t get to move up – if you don’t have the funding or someone doesn’t pick you up, then you have to stop.”

Finances on the feeder series ladder have become a greater concern year on year. Many series have seen upgraded cars in recent years as well as increased demand from prospective drivers. These together have spurred teams to up their fees for race seats, putting talented drivers at risk of being priced out of racing.

“It’s incredibly tricky, incredibly political, and as well with the rising costs of everything … I’d say since I started four or five years ago, the costs of every championship have doubled, which is pretty insane,” Lisle said. 

“And the FIA or anyone else don’t really subsidise that cost. It’s got to a point where it already was extremely exclusive and something that was difficult to achieve, but now it’s just a different level. You need so much money to go from karting all the way through to getting a foot in the door in F1.”

Drivers and their families pour years of time, effort and earnings into pursuing a path in motorsport. As such, few drivers in Lisle’s position would contemplate giving in – and he is no exception.

Lisle has stayed involved by working as a driver coach in the interim. Such a move is one already well established for drivers out of a seat; even Lisle’s former coach, Callan O’Keeffe, was a race winner at the Formula Renault 2.0 level in the mid-2010s before moving into driver coaching as an alternative to full-time racing.

“Since I announced that I wasn’t racing, I went into doing some driver coaching. I’ve kept all my training up and that sort of thing,” Lisle said.

“I quite enjoy it anyway, and with the coaching [I] end up on the sim a hell of a lot, so I’ve tried to stay as ready as possible this whole time.”

His faith paid off relatively quickly. Two sponsors helped him secure an agreement with CL Motorsport to take the FR Europe seat filled by several drivers since Enea Frey departed the team after round one.

The team based in Desenzano del Garda, Italy, are only contesting their second season in the series. Already, however, they have taken a race victory with Reno Francot, who sits fifth in the standings.

Confirmation of Lisle’s return came at short notice. Lisle only knew he would be racing at the Hungaroring on 25 June – the Thursday a week before the event.

“I was on holiday for four weeks seeing my family back home, which was really nice,” he said. 

“Then I arrived back, and I think it was like an hour after I got home or something that I got contacted about this opportunity. Pretty much within a couple of hours, we’d sort of come to an agreement, and I was on a plane to Italy to do sim and get ready for the weekend. So it’s been a fairly hectic few days.”

Keen-eyed fans may have noticed on Lisle’s social media pages that he fell victim to luggage issues while travelling, giving him even more stress to contend with.

“Ryanair managed to lose all my race kit on the way back to the UK from the sim session,” he said, “so there was getting all of that together as well, which has been a pretty difficult exercise!”

That meant Lisle appeared in a new plain white race suit – clearly unable to resolve his luggage issues quickly enough for the event. It’s fair to say, however, that all the challenges associated with his return have been worth it.

“FREC is definitely the most professional and best level of competition that I’ve ever raced in, so it’s really, really cool just to be a part of it,” he said.

“[I was] going into this weekend very unprepared, to be brutally honest, and I just haven’t been in a car for four months so there was no expectation coming into this weekend. I was just hoping to enjoy myself and that sort of thing, but thankfully I think I’ve got on with it pretty well.”

Lisle achieved two 16th-place finishes, beating his teammate Jules Roussel and several other established drivers on debut.

Those performances under pressure, even in challenging circumstances, are the kind that drivers in Lisle’s situation need to continue their careers. With the seat at CL Motorsport holding no permanent owner, Lisle sensed an opportunity for the future, and he secured a second round with the team two weeks later at Le Castellet. Though that weekend was more challenging, with Lisle unable to break into the top 20, simply being there was another step in overcoming the greatest setback of his young yet fragile career.

“I’m still learning so much every lap, and it’s all coming back to me quite quickly. I hope that we can do a few more rounds together — that would be amazing,” he said at the time. “The championship is so close. You drop a couple of tenths on the lap in quali and you move down like 10 or 15 spots on the grid, so it’s just crazy.

“[It’s] as close, if not closer than, FIA F3, so it’s really cool to be a part of, and I’m just excited to be back driving.”

Lisle is looking at both series for the future, touting FR Europe and F3 as ideal destinations for next season. Nevertheless, he remains grounded in his expectations given how quickly things can change.

“If we can get a couple of things resolved on my personal side and I can get some funding back, I’d like to think I’d end up in FREC or FIA F3 next year,” he said.

“That’d be the goal, but failing that, obviously I would like to try and make the move to sports cars. But even there, they’ll all want budgets, and if I don’t have that side of things sorted, then there’s almost no point in turning up. You just end up going into everything unprepared and it’s extremely difficult.”

Lisle is symbolic of the dilemma facing young drivers today: everything is expensive, and few things are ever guaranteed. 

But his Hungaroring return was also symbolic of the motivation – the passion for motorsport, the force of a dream – fuelling young drivers to fight to stay behind the wheel.

“I’m just enjoying this weekend for now,” Lisle said. “We’ll see what the future holds in terms of any more driving this year, here or anywhere else, and then next year whether I’ll be racing again.”

Header photo credit: FIA Formula Regional European Championship