Australian
The climb
James Anthony Wharton (born 8 July 2006 in Bundoora, a Melbourne suburb) is the latest Australian carrying the Piastri-era hope of a homegrown Formula 1 future. He started karting at eight, won the 2017 Australian Championship with eight wins from ten races, spent four years contracted to Parolin in Europe and signed with Nicolas Todt's All Road Management. By the end of 2020 he had also won the Ferrari Driver Academy's Scouting World Finals shootout as Motorsport Australia's representative, joining the academy he would carry from 2021 to 2023.
In F4 he was prolific: 2023 brought the F4 UAE title with Mumbai Falcons (four wins) plus strong Italian F4 and Euro 4 campaigns with Prema, the latter ending as runner-up with two wins. The defining junior year was 2024, when he finished runner-up in the Formula Regional European Championship with Prema, taking four wins and five poles in a strong second half.
Formula 3
After a one-off Hitech outing at Silverstone in 2024, Wharton's first full F3 campaign came in 2025 with ART Grand Prix alongside friends Laurens van Hoepen and Tuukka Taponen. Scoreless through four rounds, he broke through at the Red Bull Ring, converting reverse-grid pole into a maiden F3 win by holding off Alessandro Giusti. He closed the season 18th in the standings. A late-2025 cameo gave him an early Formula 2 taste too, a single Trident outing at the Lusail round partnering van Hoepen.
2026 / current season
There is important context behind 2026: Ferrari dropped him from its academy in December 2023, and he has rebuilt momentum independently since. For 2026 he returned to Prema Racing - a "back home" reunion - for a second F3 season alongside Jose Garfias and Louis Sharp, framing the year publicly as "make or break" with the title as the stated goal. The start was rocky: he collided with teammate Sharp in the Melbourne sprint and had a difficult Monaco. Then came the highlight - a controlled Barcelona sprint win from the front row, fending off Freddie Slater and Gerrard Xie for his first win of the year and Prema's first F3 victory since Belgium 2024. He called it a special one, and it lifted him back into contention as he chases the breakthrough season his talent has long promised.