Chinese
The climb
Gerrard Xie Wing Lam (born 24 September 2006) carries one of motorsport's more unusual origin stories: Hong Kong-born and Shenzhen-raised, he was named after Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard by a football-mad father. The football allegiance stuck, but the speed was his own. He raced karts across Asia and Europe between 2018 and 2021, taking third in the 2020 IAME Asia Cup junior class, before single-seaters revealed just how quick he was.
The 2022 season was the announcement. In Chinese F4 he was untouchable - 13 wins from 14 races and seven poles with Smart Life Racing, clinching the title by one of the largest margins the series had seen. He doubled up by winning the Formula Renault Super Challenge, sweeping his debut weekend with both wins, pole and fastest lap, and added a Macau F4 qualifying-race victory for good measure. He then moved to Britain for GB3, finishing 20th with Hillspeed in 2023 and improving to seventh with Hitech Pulse-Eight in 2024, taking a win in each campaign, alongside a Formula Regional Oceania outing.
Formula 3
Xie was promoted to the FIA Formula 3 Championship for 2025 with Hitech TGR, a rookie thrown into the strongest junior field in the world. Results were hard to come by: he scored a single point with a tenth place in the Hungaroring sprint and finished 29th in the standings, but the year banked priceless experience and a reputation for tidy qualifying pace and effective recovery drives.
2026 / current season
For 2026 he switched to DAMS Lucas Oil, lining up alongside Niko Lacorte and Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi, and the change unlocked him almost immediately. At Monaco - a circuit he rates among his strengths despite light barrier contact in qualifying - he crossed the line second in the sprint and was promoted to the win after Hiyu Yamakoshi's post-race technical disqualification. He had gone to sleep believing he had finished second and only learned of the victory in the paddock on Sunday morning. However it arrived, the result was historic: China's first-ever win in FIA Formula 3, and DAMS Lucas Oil's maiden F3 victory too. "Super happy to get the team their first victory, my first victory, and China's first victory in F3," he said. By mid-season the milestone win had lifted him into the top ten of the standings, the headline achievement of a career still very much on the rise.