🇿🇦 Jonathan Aberdein

Jonathan Aberdein is a professional racing driver from South Africa who raced single-seaters, touring cars and sports cars from 2016 to 2022. Graded FIA Gold, the full-professional rating for endurance racing, Aberdein competed primarily in formula championships and latterly in multiclass prototype endurance racing. His indexed career spans eight seasons and 123 starts across ADAC Formula 4, FIA Formula 3 European, DTM, European Le Mans Series, WEC and ADAC GT Masters, racing for Motopark in his early years and Inter Europol Competition in endurance events.[1]

His single-seater years saw five podiums across two seasons in ADAC Formula 4 and three across a full Formula 3 European campaign in 2018, results built against a field mixing amateurs with Gold-graded professionals. A move to DTM in 2019 brought 34 starts over two seasons without a podium finish. His breakthrough came in prototype endurance racing; between 2021 and 2023 Aberdein took one win and five further podiums across ten European Le Mans Series starts, racing LMP2 prototypes for Inter Europol. He also contested seven WEC rounds across 2021 and 2022, taking two podiums including a result in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. A spell in ADAC GT Masters in 2022, shared-drive endurance racing in single-class GT machinery, yielded three podiums from four starts.[2]

Aberdein raced regularly against Ferdinand Habsburg, who won the 2021 WEC LMP2 championship and the 2022 European Le Mans Series LMP2 title, and against Fabio Scherer, a Gold-graded professional with substantial racing across formula and touring categories. His record against stronger opposition includes finishing ahead of Alex Palou eight times, a driver now a four-time IndyCar champion and rated elite professional, and of Franco Colapinto, an elite professional who went on to Formula 1.