Born in Stavanger in 2000, Havmord Gatevold grew up shredding snowmobiles across frozen fjords before discovering that tarmac could be attacked with equal abandon. His karting upbringing was equal parts ice-racing bravado and Nordic mechanical ingenuity—he famously ran a homemade turbocharger fashioned from a chainsaw exhaust during junior events.
Gatevold leapt into the Formula Odin League as a 2025 rookie, instantly polarising the paddock with lurid helmet designs, stand-up-comic press conferences, and audacious overtakes that sometimes ended in the gravel. Critics dismissed him as “the Viking clown.”
Originally signed by Scuderia Ferrari, Gatevold chafed at the team’s rigid hierarchy and ritualised race-day protocol (“too many hand gestures, not enough horsepower,” he quipped). Friction peaked when he live-streamed a pit-wall karaoke session mid-practice, and the relationship never recovered.
For 2026 he engineered a headline-grabbing defection to Alpine F1 Team, convincing his long-time teammate and data-guru Ingrid Sjåvik to follow. Pre-season testing saw him top three of the four wet-weather sessions, vaulting him from comic relief to dark-horse title contender.
Still brash—he warms up by blasting eurobeat through the garage PA—Gatevold now couples showmanship with a maturing race intellect. If he sustains the newfound consistency, Norway may soon celebrate its first global single-seater champion, proving that what looked like clown shoes were really just ice-racing boots built for podium steps.
Born in Stavanger in 2000, Havmord Gatevold grew up shredding snowmobiles across frozen fjords before discovering that tarmac could be attacked with equal abandon. His karting upbringing was equal parts ice-racing bravado and Nordic mechanical ingenuity—he famously ran a homemade turbocharger fashioned from a chainsaw exhaust during junior events.
