Witten by Jake O’Callaghan
NEOM McLaren Formula E team announced today that Taylor Barnard would join the team for the 2024/25 season (Season 11). He will partner fellow countryman and Formula E veteran Sam Bird, who continues with the team for his second season in papaya. Barnard, from the United Kingdom, has been one of the most impressive young talents in single seater racing in recent years.
He replaces Jake Hughes, who departs the British outfit after two seasons at the team. Hughes will join Maserati starting in Season 11.
Barnard was the official reserve driver for NEOM McLaren in 2024 (Season 10), and was called into action when Sam Bird injured his hand in Monaco practice. Barnard had to jump in with little practice on one of the toughest tracks in the world. He qualified last, but made his way up in the race and finished a respectable 14th.
He would also fill in for Bird in the following Berlin doubleheader as the Briton recovered from surgery to correct his hand injury. Barnard would raise eyebrows that weekend, with an incredible double points finish, netting five points for the team with 10th and eighth place finishes in respective races.
These performances put him at the top of the radar for NEOM McLaren going into Season 11.
He also boasts an impressive CV in the feeder series, with a second place in the German F4 standings in 2022, and consecutive second place finishes in the Formula Regional Middle East Championship in 2023 and 2024. In 2023, he joined Jenzer Motorsport to embark on an FIA Formula 3 campaign.
He stunned throughout the season, taking what was previously considered a backmarker team to heights they hadn’t seen in years. The peak of his season came at the penultimate round in Spa-Francorchamps, where Barnard secured a magnificent feature race win for the Italian outfit, their first F3 win in four years.
Across the season as a whole, Barnard scored an impressive 72 points, finishing 10th out of 35 entrants. He scored the vast majority of the team’s points that season, and took them to a strong 6th place finish in the teams’ standings, their highest F3 championship finish ever.
In 2024, Barnard embarked on a Formula 2 campaign with the young AIX Racing team. It was just their second season in the championship, and as such they wanted drivers they believed could help them build into a more competitive team.
Barnard and teammate Joshua Duerksen have struggled so far this year, sitting low in the championship standings. Despite this, the unequivocal highlight of the season came when Barnard took an incredible sprint race win in Monaco.
He used the experience gained from competing in the Formula E event a month prior to his advantage, and stood on the top step at the most famous race track in the world.
Barnard and teammate Bird will look to build on the progress NEOM McLaren made in Season 10, which was shown most evidently when Bird took the win after a thrilling battle at the Sao Paulo ePrix.
With Bird and Barnard, NEOM McLaren combine experience and youth as they look to emulate the heights reached under their previous identity as Mercedes, where winning championships was the minimum.
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