There is an unwritten rule in elite motorsport that says to reach the top you must start from the bottom, from karting, from four-year-old karts, from childhood circuits and sleepless nights of devoted parents chasing a dream. Noah Strømsted broke that rule from day one. He never did karting. Not once. And yet at 14 he was one of the youngest drivers ever to win a Formula 4 race in Europe. At 17 he was the best rookie in the Formula Regional European Championship. Also at 17 he made his Formula 3 debut. And at 18 he was in the Mercedes Junior Team and winning at Spa with a six second margin over second place.
The story of Noah Malling Strømsted is the story of a driver who built his career in a completely different way to everyone else and who, with his second full F3 season in 2026 with Trident, has the opportunity to prove that his path was not just valid but brilliant.
Copenhagen, 2007: the start of a different story
Noah Malling Strømsted was born on July 29th 2007 in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. He grew up in the city that houses Christiansborg Palace and the Nyhavn harbour, a city with a culture closer to cycling and football than to motorsport. Denmark is not a country with mass karting culture like Italy, Spain or the United Kingdom. There is no karting track in every town. There is no infrastructure that in other countries produces drivers from the cradle.
That explains in part why Strømsted never did karting. According to his profile on the official Mercedes website, he completed an extensive testing programme before jumping directly into Formula 4. It was not an aesthetic choice but a logical consequence of his environment. And it turned out to work exactly as well or better than the conventional path.
His motorsport debut came in 2021 at barely 13 years old when he joined the Danish Formula 4 Championship with FSP Racing from the third round of the season. The reason for the late season debut was regulatory: he had to turn 14 to compete in single-seater series with an international licence. When his first race weekend arrived, he won. And won again in the next race of the same weekend. Then won again at the following event at Padborg Park, although a crash in race two prevented him from taking part in the third race.
By the end of the season Noah Strømsted had won nine of the eleven races he contested and finished runner-up in the championship. At 14 years old. With not a single day of karting behind him. One of the most impactful debuts in the history of the Danish category.
2022: Spanish F4 and the first international steps
With 14 years and the Danish runner-up title in hand, Strømsted wanted more. The next step was an international series and Spanish F4 with Campos Racing gave him the opportunity. He arrived at the last two rounds of the 2022 championship at Navarra, waiting to turn 15 as the Spanish regulations required. His first weekend was solid: eighth in race one, fifth in race two, pole for the main Sunday race, although a poor start and a subsequent collision cut short the result. The flashes of speed were already visible.
To prepare his first full season, he spent the winter of 2022-23 in the UAE competing in the Formula 4 UAE Championship with PHM Racing. A third-place podium and ninth overall. Kilometres, experience, heat and different tyres. All accumulated for when the big step came.
2023: Full Spanish F4 season and the first glimpse of what he could be
The 2023 season was his first full campaign in a relevant international category: Spanish F4 with Campos Racing. And Strømsted responded with the consistency that in the following years would become his hallmark.
His first podium came at Aragón. Then a double podium at the Circuito de Navarra. With regular points finishes throughout the year, he finished seventh in the championship with 135 points and three podiums. It was not a title but it was exactly what he needed: miles of experience on European circuits, mastery of the car and the rules, and confirmation that he was the right driver for the next step.
That same year at Monza at the end of the season he also made a guest appearance in the Formula Regional European Championship with RPM. His best result was a sixth place in the first race. He was already looking toward Formula Regional.
2024: FRECA and the rookie title that caught the attention of Mercedes and Trident
The year 2024 was the one that transformed Strømsted from a promising driver into one of the names everyone in the junior paddock was watching. He stayed with RPM for the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine, the series that operates as a transition category between F4 and F3 on Formula 1 calendar circuits.
He started the year with a pointless weekend at Hockenheim. Then came the first upward curve of the year: second place at Spa-Francorchamps. And from there it did not stop. Three more second places at Paul Ricard, Imola and Austria. His first career pole position at Austria too. By the end of the year he had four podiums, three fastest laps, one pole, 121 points and sixth place overall in the championship. But the most important thing was the best rookie of the year title, winning the debut category ahead of Evan Giltaire.
At the same time, at the final F3 2024 round at Monza, Strømsted had the opportunity to debut in the category as a substitute for Oliver Goethe at Campos Racing, who had been promoted to F2 for that event. His debut was modest in result terms, seventeenth in the Sprint and twenty-third in the Feature Race, but the objective was experience and not the result.
The end of 2024 brought two important pieces of news almost simultaneously. The first, signing with Trident for F3 2025. The second, that he had been selected for the Mercedes Junior Team, the talent development programme of the most successful team in Formula 1’s recent history.
2025: F3, the Mercedes programme, the Spa victory and the most complete year
The 2025 Formula 3 season was the most intense and formative of Strømsted’s career to date. He entered the championship as a Trident rookie, a team that had won the drivers’ title three consecutive years with Bortoleto, Fornaroli and Câmara, the same Câmara who would be his 2025 teammate and who turned out to be the championship favourite from day one.
Melbourne was a good start. He qualified on the front row. The Sprint Race ended in retirement with front wing damage. But the wet Feature Race gave him his first podium: second behind Câmara, showing a reading of the car in mixed conditions that caught attention. In Bahrain he scored tenth and sixth. At Imola he qualified third, was sixth in the Sprint and almost won the Feature Race, losing by tenths to Santiago Ramos.
Then came the difficulties. Monaco was his worst weekend of the year: he failed to qualify in the top 12 and did not score. Barcelona started well in the Sprint where opening-lap chaos moved him to second, but retirement four laps from the end due to a hydraulic problem. Austria was irregular, Silverstone pointless. The year had the typical rookie pattern: brilliant when everything works, difficult to sustain through complicated weekends.
The turning point came at Spa-Francorchamps on July 26th. In the Sprint Race Strømsted started second behind Freddie Slater but used DRS to overtake the Briton in the opening laps. From that moment he opened a six-second gap that never closed again. First victory in F3. With authority. At a circuit he knew well from his FRECA years. His post-race reaction was that of someone who had waited for that moment and won it the right way: finished P1, first of the season. Extremely happy, the pace today was very, very strong. To bounce back from two difficult weekends in Silverstone and Austria is amazing. Thank you very much to the team.
The rest of the year was uneven though he scored points at both Monza season finales. He finished sixth in the championship with 84 points, one victory, three podiums and four fastest laps. Trident was second in the teams’ championship. And in November he raced the Macau Grand Prix with Trident, finishing seventh in the main race after a clean, incident-free management of one of the most complicated circuits in the world.
At the end of 2025 however came news that was not part of the plan: Mercedes decided not to renew him in their junior programme. Strømsted left the Mercedes Junior Team after just ten months. The news was confirmed quietly when his name disappeared from the team’s official website while the rest of his programme colleagues remained listed. It was a real setback but not a definitive one for an 18-year-old with everything still to prove.
2026: The second season with Trident and the ambition to fight for the title
Before September 2025 was out, Strømsted’s continuity with Trident for F3 2026 was confirmed. It was the right decision. The team knew him, he knew the team, he shared engineers and mechanics with whom he had built a working relationship across the entire previous season. Continuity as a competitive advantage is one of the most underestimated factors in junior categories.
His new teammates would be Freddie Slater, the 2025 FRECA champion and new Audi junior recruit, and Matteo de Palo, the Italian also arriving from FRECA and announced as part of the McLaren junior programme. A lineup with enormous combined potential, in which Strømsted was the only one with prior F3 experience.
His 2026 objectives he defined clearly in a February press conference covered by Pit Debrief: qualifying. That was the critical area that had cost him points in 2025. Circuits like Monaco where you have to qualify in the top half of the grid or the weekend becomes complicated from the start. The winter simulator work was focused on that, on understanding how to deliver the qualifying lap under greater pressure.
At Melbourne the first 2026 round, the result was mixed but honest. In the Sprint Race he scored points with fourth place. In the Feature Race he received a ten-second penalty for a collision, which dropped him down the order but without losing sight of the championship. He ended twelfth in the championship after Melbourne with 2 points, while teammate Slater started second with 18 points and led the internal team fight.
The calendar ahead is the most demanding of his career so far. Monaco in June. Barcelona. Austria. Silverstone. Spa again. Budapest. Monza. Madrid as a new addition. At each of those circuits Strømsted has something to prove and experience to leverage, particularly at those he already raced at last year.
Key quotes and curiosities
Strømsted after his first F3 victory at Spa 2025: finished P1, first of the season. Extremely happy, the pace today was very, very strong. To bounce back from two difficult weekends in Silverstone and Austria is amazing. So thank you very much to the team.
Strømsted in the Trident renewal announcement for 2026: I am very happy to continue with Trident Motorsport in the 2026 FIA Formula 3 Championship. After completing my first full year with the Italian team, I look forward to building on this experience together. Our goal will be to fight for wins and ultimately the championship throughout the year.
Strømsted on the value of already knowing Monaco: I think it will be very important, especially in places like Monaco, where it is a street circuit that people have normally not raced at before. It is a big advantage to have been there already and to know what to expect and how to maximise the weekend.
Among the curiosities worth knowing: Strømsted is almost certainly the only driver in the current F3 paddock who never raced in karting before debuting in single-seaters. That peculiarity has not gone unnoticed among junior motorsport experts. His surname contains the special Danish character ø, which exists in no other European language outside Danish, Norwegian and Faroese, and which is pronounced as a blend between a closed e and o sound. It is no coincidence that international media often write it simply as Stromsted omitting the special character. And he is 18 years old in a championship where most of his rivals are the same age or even younger, which says everything about the speed of his development.
Sources: Wikipedia Noah Strømsted English, FIA Formula 3 official fiaformula3.com, Trident Motorsport official tridentmotorsport.com, Mercedes AMG F1 Junior Driver mercedesamgf1.com, Feeder Series, Pit Debrief, AutoHebdo, F1Technical, Formula Scout, The Paddock Chronicle, Dive-Bomb, Formula1.com official, FIA Formula 3 official statements
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