Finnish
Niko Kari (born 6 October 1999) is a Finnish racing driver and former Red Bull Junior who built his reputation as a single-seater prospect in the second half of the 2010s. He moved into cars in 2015 and won the SMP F4 Championship in his debut year, earning a place on the Red Bull Junior Team in December 2015.
Junior single-seaters
In 2016 Kari graduated to the FIA Formula 3 European Championship with Motopark, where he took a win at Imola. He then spent two seasons in the GP3 Series: tenth in the 2017 standings, taking a first GP3 win in Abu Dhabi on what proved to be his final weekend as a Red Bull Junior, after the energy-drink programme parted ways with him at the end of 2017. He remained in GP3 for 2018 with MP Motorsport.
Formula 2 and Formula 3
Part-way through 2018, after fourteen races, Kari was promoted to the FIA Formula 2 Championship with MP Motorsport for the remainder of the season. For the rebranded FIA Formula 3 Championship in 2019 he drove for Trident, scoring two third-place podiums at Barcelona and Sochi and finishing 12th in the standings with 36 points. He had a brief, ill-fated return to FIA F3 in 2022 but lost a planned Charouz drive on the eve of the season. Kari reached the top step of GP3 and tasted both F2 and F3, but never converted his junior promise into a full F1 graduation.