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Was Ugochukwu also on Red Bull or Mercedes list? 'Interest from big teams'

14:24, 02 Apr 2021

byGPblog.com

McLaren recently surprised with the acquisition of Ugo Ugochukwu. The 13-year-old American is seen as a super talent and therefore McLaren is only too happy that all the signatures are now put under a long-term agreement. The team from Woking was not the only one who was angling for the services of Ugochukwu.

After winning the IA OKJ European Championship 2020, the ball started rolling and more and more teams showed interest in Ugochukwu. In the end, it was McLaren that managed to loosen him up from Sauber's junior karting program.

"There was interest from a couple of other teams — some of the big ones. I think he’s got a great racing pedigree — Andreas (Seidl) and I spoke about it quite a bit — so we did have to put some work into it because if he wasn’t going to sign with McLaren he was definitely going to have a Formula 1 relationship and he had a couple of different choices", said Zak Brown at RACER.

Who was interested?

The McLaren boss doesn't mention any specific team names, but it seems conceivable that Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull Racing (or at least one or two of them) had Ugochukwu on their list as well.