Dennis Hauger's climb from Formula 3 champion to IndyCar debut

Dennis Hauger is a Norwegian driver who won the 2021 FIA Formula 3 Championship with Prema, raced in Formula 2 from 2022 to 2024 and then took the 2025 Indy NXT title. He made his IndyCar debut with Dale Coyne Racing in 2026 and will move to A. J. Foyt Racing for 2027. Each step came after a clear result in the category below, and that pattern runs through his whole career.

How did Hauger start his single-seater career?

Hauger started karting at five and won his first race at eight, having been raised in Aurskog after being born in Oslo. He moved into single-seaters in 2018 with the TRS Arden junior team in the British F4 Championship, winning four races and finishing fourth overall. He was already part of the Red Bull junior system by then.

A quad bike arrived when he was two, and he moved on to cross bikes at four. Before he crossed to international karting he had finished on the podium in 62 of seventy national races. In 2014 he claimed the ROK International title in the Mini category, and the following year he added the Vega Winter Trophy, the Italian CSAI championship and the WSK Champions Cup and Super Masters.

He won the DKM junior title in 2017 as the youngest winner the series had recorded, and he repeated the feat the following year. He had signed with the TRS Arden junior team in October 2017, alongside Jack Doohan. Doohan took the junior title in the British series, while Hauger finished fourth overall.

In 2019 he moved to Van Amersfoort Racing for the ADAC and Italian F4 championships. He won six ADAC races, including one at the Hockenheim round supporting Formula One, and finished runner-up to Theo Pourchaire by seven points. The Italian series was a different story: he won twelve races, including a weekend grand slam at Monza, and sealed the title with a round to spare.

The 2019 season had one more chapter. In August he stood in for Liam Lawson in the Euroformula Open at Silverstone, replacing him, and finished sixth and fifth in the two races.

In 2020 he drove for Hitech Grand Prix alongside Liam Lawson and Max Fewtrell. His first Formula 3 points came with eighth at the Hungaroring, where he was on reverse-grid pole for race two. He led much of that race before the track dried, and he finished third to claim his first podium. Hauger then failed to score in the rest of the season, which ended seventeenth in the standings with 14 points.

At the Catalunya post-season test he worked alongside the reigning champions, was inside the top ten each day and peaked at third in both afternoon sessions. Prema then fielded him again for a second post-season test at Jerez later that month.

A quiet climb from Italian F4 to an IndyCar debut, with a championship at every stop that mattered.

Why did the 2021 Formula 3 title matter?

The 2021 FIA Formula 3 title went to Hauger with Prema, after a fight with Jack Doohan in a title fight that went down to the final round at Sochi. He clinched the championship there by finishing second in the first race, two races before the end of the season, after a fourth win of the year at Zandvoort.

Prema signed him for 2021 alongside Olli Caldwell and Arthur Leclerc, and his first F3 pole came at Barcelona. In race two he fought for the lead with Matteo Nannini, but the two collided, breaking his front wing and dropping him to the back. Race three was different: he led every lap and took his first F3 victory.

The Red Bull Ring round was a turning point. He took pole there and finished all three races on the podium, including a race one win after starting 12th. A wet-weather win at the Hungaroring extended his championship lead to 63 points, and it looked like a comfortable position.

It was not quite that smooth. Spa brought only six points, and Jack Doohan closed the gap before the penultimate round. Hauger then lost a chance of a podium three laps from the end of race two at Zandvoort after a collision with Ido Cohen, but he came back in the final race to extend his lead again. He later said he had doubted himself the year before, and that the move to Prema had cleared those doubts.

Before the title race he had taken two consecutive second places at Paul Ricard, and after the season finale he drove an F3 development car in a tyre test at Barcelona, completing 123 laps on a dry track.

How did the Formula 2 years go?

Hauger spent three seasons in Formula 2, first with Prema in 2022, then with MP Motorsport in 2023 and 2024. In 2022 he finished tenth in the standings with 115 points, and he won the Monaco sprint from start to finish for his maiden Formula 2 victory.

He had tested with the team at the end of 2021, and in January 2022 he confirmed he would partner Jehan Daruvala at Prema. Bahrain brought a fifteenth-place qualifying spot and a sprint in which he narrowly missed points, before he ran in the points in the feature but retired after a faulty pit stop left a tyre detached from his car.

His 2022 season had its low points. A ten-second penalty after a safety car mix-up cost him a result in Jeddah, and a collision at Imola ended a feature race early. He also won the Baku feature after Juri Vips crashed out, and a podium in the Zandvoort sprint came after a run of poor results. He finished the Abu Dhabi weekend with fourth places in both the sprint and the feature.

Imola brought his first podium in the category, third in the sprint, although a collision with Jack Doohan ended his feature race after three turns. Barcelona was uneventful, with 14th in qualifying. In France he qualified 18th after a fuel pump failure and scored nothing. At Hungary he reached the top ten in qualifying, but was eliminated on the opening lap of the sprint and then struggled with tyre wear to finish 19th in the feature. Monza brought a ninth place in the sprint after making up ten places, and a fourth in the feature after a climb of fifteen places, despite a drive-through penalty.

In 2023 he moved to MP Motorsport and kept Jehan Daruvala as his team-mate. He opened with second in the Bahrain sprint, managing his tyres well, while an engine issue left him lapped in the feature. He then won the Melbourne sprint from reverse pole and took a second victory of the year in Hungary. That season he also stepped in for the injured Franco Colapinto at the Macau Grand Prix in November, finishing second in the main race. The Formula 2 season closed eighth in the standings with 113 points, two wins and two podiums.

Baku ended in a crash at turn one during the sprint, while in the feature he finished sixth. Monaco brought fifteenth in the sprint and a fifth in the feature, after a timed red flag let him change tyres. Spain gave him fourth in a wet sprint, where he lost the final podium place late to Theo Pourchaire, and an eighth place in the feature.

The 2024 season opened with two eighth places in Bahrain, followed by a sprint win at Jeddah after Richard Verschoor was disqualified, which turned a rostrum into a victory. He took his maiden pole in Melbourne and a second pole in Austria. Spa brought a red-flagged wet sprint with another second place. Silverstone brought seventh and ninth place finishes, and Monza saw him tie eighth in the sprint before a collision with Ritomo Miyata ended his feature race. Hauger chose to leave Formula 2 before Qatar, to focus on his Indy NXT preparation, and Richard Verschoor took his place. He finished eleventh in the standings with 85.5 points.

What happened with Red Bull?

Hauger joined the Red Bull Junior Team in September 2017 as one of four new signings. In 2023 he was named one of four reserve drivers for Red Bull Racing Formula One, and in October that year he announced that he would part ways with the team after six years, accepting the brutal nature of such decisions.

He said he had known since July that he would not be kept on. His Formula E involvement was limited to two outings. He drove for the TAG Heuer Porsche team at the 2024 Berlin rookie test and, later, took part in the rookie free practice session with Andretti at the 2026 Miami ePrix.

How did the 2025 Indy NXT title come about?

Hauger switched to racing in America in 2025, competing in Indy NXT with Andretti Global, and he won the championship that year. He took pole in his first race at St. Petersburg and claimed a first lights-to-flag win, then won again at Barber from pole, building a points lead over his teammate Lochie Hughes.

He had offers to stay in Formula 2, but he judged that another year there made little sense. The move meant learning every American track from scratch, which he has described as a major part of his adaptation to open-wheel racing in the United States.

The Indianapolis weekend tested him. Hughes beat him to pole by 0.0695 of a second, and in race one Hauger went three-wide into turn one, made contact and fell to the back. He fought back to eighth. Race two was the answer: he passed Hughes after an early caution, won the race and opened a fifteen-point advantage in the standings.

How did the IndyCar debut begin?

After winning the Indy NXT title in September 2025, Hauger made his IndyCar debut in 2026 with Dale Coyne Racing. At the opening St. Petersburg round he qualified third, reaching the Fast 6 on his debut. He was named IndyCar Rookie of the Year for 2026.

He is the first Norwegian IndyCar driver in 109 years. The only previous one, Gil Andersen, raced in the Indianapolis 500 between 1911 and 1916. Hauger has carried a lucky amulet from his grandmother since he began international karting competitions.

On 16 September 2026 A. J. Foyt Racing announced it had signed him to a multi-year deal to drive car No. 14 from the 2027 season, the next step in a career built on steady results.

Career results by series