FREDDIE SLATER
The 14-year-old youngest-ever Ginetta champion is seeking this year’s main Ginetta Junior title after claiming the winter series crown
I’m going for the Ginetta Junior championship title this year. With the team around me, R Racing, the management team around me, my coach, my family, I know I can win the championship. I’m going to try and win as many races as possible and try and beat the record. Ginetta racing is the main focus for this year and it got off to a good start in late 2022. I made my Ginetta Junior race debut at Snetterton in August and recently won its winter series at Brands Hatch.
In the winter series I won three races out of four. We had a clutch failure that caused me to jump the start in one race, so I could have actually gone for four wins out of four. But we made massive progress and got faster and faster so it was a great weekend overall.
My dad Adrian Slater used to race Porsches and he did the Britcar Silverstone 24 hours, and I was two weeks old and sat in the trophy when he won the Silverstone 24 hours in 1998. Then when I was four years old my dad got me a kart and that was literally it. I have won World and European Karting championships in recent years, and also won British and American titles previously.
When you jump from a kart into a car for the first time it’s a full reset. It’s like riding a bike for the very first time when you’re two years old. You get a bit of knowledge from your karting to help you but not much.
Driving the Ginetta Junior car for the first time was a bit strange because they’re on treaded tyres. It’s so easy to push understeer, and once I’d started learning not to push understeer but getting the rotation I was then not able to carry the speed through the corner because I was not trusting the car to let it go. But once I really worked on that especially after the last round of the main championship I managed to get that feeling and then crack on.
I went into my Ginetta Junior race debut knowing I could put myself in the mix straight away because I trust myself that I can do it. My main thinking was I’m going to learn, and work on everything that’s possible. I was improving a lot with each race I did. It was hard at the start, I can’t lie, racecraft is a big thing and you’ve always got a lot of variables in the contest, but I just managed to push on with it and keep chipping away at it and never give up. I found a good sweet spot now for 2023 and I’ll definitely put it into the championship.
R Racing definitely knows what it is doing; it’s the best team on that grid, simple as that. When I got there and I looked around at other teams I thought that at R Racing if something’s broken on one car that’s getting fixed, it’s not going to stay there because it’s only a tiny problem. Everything is spot on so I’m really looking forward to this year with the team.
I’ll also still be doing karting this year, and will be trying to win in that as well, so I can’t wait to both race cars in Ginetta Junior and also race in karting in the same year.
The Ginetta Junior championship doesn’t start until April so there’s a lot of time for karting in between. I don’t think karting does you any harm, and it keeps you sharp and fit. It will be in the KZ category this time, so it’s with the gearbox and will be racing with older people such as 20-year-olds, so I’m going to try and give them a run for their money.
My ambition is to get to Formula 1. I definitely have the confidence in myself to do it and go and beat some records in that as well. And then I would also like to do some endurance racing; that’s so cool to do and in racing you need to go and do the good experiences along the way as well.
Obviously I see other racers and think they’re fast, they’re good, nice people,
I like their attitude and that, but I don’t look up to anyone as much because sometimes people try to be like somebody too much. So I just try and be myself, my own person, listen to my coaches, learn, work on it and just keep on chipping away.
“I definitely have the confidence in myself to do Formula 1”