Rodin founder David Dicker is eyeing a spot on the F1 grid as are many others in 2026, but he is behind a list of people.
Having bought the Carlin facility from Trevor which includes its UK base and running under ‘Rodin Carlin’ name in various junior championships, its founder Dicker has bigger ambitions to compete in F1 with one of its base in New Zealand.
“They’re going to decide in July, but to be honest, having got to the second step [in the application process], I feel moderately confident we might actually be able to manage to do it,” said Dicker to The Press. “So it’s all fairly achievable.
“I mean, on the race team side, we’re sort of pretty much here. We’ve got a pretty good set-up here [in New Zealand]. There are still a lot of things we’d have to do, but we’ve already got a lot of the pieces in place.
“Everyone wants to go to Formula One because it’s the ultimate in motor racing. All the other series pale into insignificance by comparison. I can’t imagine they will let us in, I’ll be honest with you. They’ll think the whole thing is crazy.
‘Got these dudes in the backside of the world blah, blah, blah’. And I’m just waiting for the excuse for why they won’t let us in. It’s a crazy scheme but f… it, we are going to do it anyway. From my point of view it’s just a game.
“There is an opportunity there and we are going to give it a shot,” summed up Dicker, who will face challenge from the likes of Andretti Cadillac, Panthera, Hitech GP, Formula Equal, SKY LUNZ and more, who all are looking for a spot on F1 grid in 2026.
One of the key reasons why Dicker feels he may not get a look in is his bold notion of hiring Jamie Chadwick as one his F1 drivers with upcoming star Louis Sharp also one of the potential drivers. The former is racing in Indy NXT while the latter is leading in British F4.
Rodin also supports Red Bull junior Liam Lawson. “I think we’ve got a very good case, and they ought to put us in [the competition],” Dicker said to Financial Review. “My guess is they won’t. It’ll never happen with the current guys who are in [the sport]. Trust me.”
But nevertheless, he is still pursuing the bid and is confident of building a F1 car by using Carlin’s facilities in the UK and also its own in New Zealand. In another bold call, Dicker feels that they can even build their own power unit for the team.
“We want to build our own power unit,” he said. “We have got everything we need to do it here in this shed Some of the design work will be done in Britain but we will make the car here. It doesn’t make any difference where you do the manufacturing.
“The F1 guys race all around the world. If we wanted to we could build a car to the F1 regulations and just sell it as a customer car. I wouldn’t rule that out. We are still going to build the cars. We’ve got a couple of basically new cars coming down the pipeline but we don’t want to say too much about them at this stage.”
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