“We were very often together, whenever there was a weekend or a Wednesday afternoon after school,” Charles said. “We’d kart with Jules; my older brother [Lorenzo]; Jules’ brother, Tom; Arthur; and some other friends, and that remains the best memories that I have in this sport.”
Arthur started competing in karting at age 8 in France but only infrequently.
“We didn’t really have the money to continue,” he said. “There was a choice, to go with my brother [or] myself,” and his brother was chosen. “Charles was in a much higher level,” Arthur said.
The family’s choice, to support Charles’ career financially where they could, was a decision that Arthur accepted but still found tough to take. He returned to racing in his teens when his father “managed to find a bit of money” for some entries, and he won the Kart Racing Academy title in 2014, but he still only competed occasionally.
But in late 2017, his family arranged for him to do a one-day Formula 4 test with the junior team Prema Racing at Adria International Raceway in Italy.
“If I did badly, then obviously I would have thought to do something else; if I was good, then maybe we would give [a career] a try,” Arthur said. “I was shaking like crazy prior to this test, as I knew I had one shot to convince them to continue. It went really well.”
“I felt already quite comfortable in the car, despite spending so much time without racing,” he remembered, adding that, before that day, his experience driving racecars was “only on computer games.”
Arthur raced in French Formula 4 in 2018, its German counterpart in 2019, and in 2020, he joined Ferrari’s young driver academy. He moved to Formula 3, won several races and was in a close title fight in 2022 but finished sixth.
