Rodin Motorsport is the modern identity of one of the most decorated junior single-seater teams in the history of the sport: Carlin. For nearly three decades the Carlin name was synonymous with the racing ladder that feeds Formula 1 — a graduate factory that polished a remarkable roster of future grand prix drivers before being acquired and rebranded by New Zealand's Rodin Cars. In F1pedia's records the team appears continuously under the Rodin Motorsport name across F2 (2018 onward) and F3 (2019 onward), reflecting how the FIA's modern data normalises the historic Carlin entries under the team's present identity.
Origins — the Carlin legacy
Carlin was founded in 1996 in the United Kingdom by Trevor Carlin (with business partner Martin Stone), originally as Carlin Motorsport. From a base in Surrey, it grew into a fixture of the British and European junior ladder, racking up an extraordinary haul of titles across British Formula 3, GP3, Formula Renault and beyond. By the 2010s Carlin was widely regarded as the benchmark privateer development team — the kind of squad an ambitious teenager joined to be seen by Formula 1.
The graduate factory
Carlin's enduring fame rests on the drivers it helped launch. A young Sebastian Vettel raced for the team in its junior programmes in the mid-2000s before going on to win four Formula 1 World Championships. The conveyor belt continued for years: Daniel Ricciardo, George Russell, and Lando Norris all spent formative seasons under the Carlin banner on their way to F1. Norris, in particular, won the FIA European Formula 3 Championship with Carlin in 2017 as a rookie before stepping up to Formula 2. Few teams in the feeder categories can claim a comparable alumni list, and it is this pipeline — rather than any single trophy — that defines the team's legacy.
The F2 and F3 era
When GP2 became the FIA Formula 2 Championship, Carlin carried its reputation into the new era. In its first season in the rebranded series, 2018, Carlin won the Formula 2 Teams' Championship, edging ART Grand Prix by 31 points with the pairing of Lando Norris and Sérgio Sette Câmara — Norris finishing runner-up in the drivers' standings to George Russell. The team also became a permanent entrant in the FIA Formula 3 Championship from its 2019 inaugural season, fielding a rotating cast of rising talents. Across these campaigns the squad ran roughly 43 distinct drivers in F2 and F3 combined, a measure of its role as a high-throughput proving ground.
Becoming Rodin
The team's identity changed hands in the 2020s. In 2023, the New Zealand-based hypercar manufacturer Rodin Cars, led by founder David Dicker, took a majority shareholding following his investment, and the team raced that year as Rodin Carlin. Late in 2023, after a falling-out between Dicker and Trevor Carlin, the Carlin family departed the operation; Trevor Carlin left in November 2023. In January 2024 the team was rebranded outright as Rodin Motorsport, retiring the historic Carlin name and trading its famous blue livery for Rodin's New Zealand-inspired black and white. The Surrey-based outfit continued in F2, F3 and the wider junior ladder under Dicker's ownership.
Identity
Rodin Motorsport carries forward the institutional knowledge of a team that, as Carlin, defined what a junior-formula graduate factory could be. Its history is a study in continuity through change: the same garages and engineering culture that prepared Vettel, Ricciardo, Russell and Norris now operate under a manufacturer's banner, with a 2018 F2 Teams' title and a deep well of F3 pedigree behind it. For followers of the F1 ladder, Rodin remains the team whose name once appeared on the helmets of half a grand prix grid.