Former Sauber star stops racing to join the army

A racing driver once part of the Sauber driving development programme has quit motor racing to take up national service.

Christian Ho competed in F3 this season for the Rodin Motorsport team but didn't take part in the season finale in Madrid at the weekend, being replaced by the Italian Niccolo Maccagnani.

Instead of racing, Ho has now enlisted with mandatory national service in his homeland Singapore for two years.

The 19-year-old admits that it could possibly be the end of his racing career, as he weighs up the prospect of going to university once his national service is complete.

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Ho's goodbye to motor racing

On an Instagram post, he wrote: "Hi everyone, not the announcement I wanted to make but I have decided not to race the last round in Madrid as I am preparing to enlist for my mandatory national service in Singapore.

"This also means that I will likely not be racing for the coming years. This year's campaign has been underwhelming in part due to clashes with my A levels from may to end June but also with knowing that I probably would not be doing any racing due to my national service.

"Nevertheless, I want to thank everyone that’s been a part of this journey, I’ve learnt many life lessons and certainly have had a lot of fun along the way!

"I also want to personally thank my family, my sponsors and coaches for always supporting me because I could never have done all this without them.

"Like I said, so far I have no plans yet racing wise but probably going to uni after my ns!

"But I’ll definitely do some stuff which will be related to racing and keep you guys updated!

"Thanks for all the support along the way! Also I want to thank Rodin Motorsport for this year, of course not that way I wanted it to go but thanks for the continued support and the great car as well."

With the off the track focuses, Ho struggled during the campaign to make an impact with his only points coming in a ninth place finish at the feature race in Hungary.

Ho joined the Sauber Karting team in 2019, a prospective path to the F1 team now known as Audi. But he left Sauber in 2021, going onto finish runner up in the F4 Spanish championship in 2023 before winning the Eurocup-3 series the following year.

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A post shared by Christian Ho (@christianho51)

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Written by

Dan Ripley - Global Editor

I've been a massive F1 fan since the mid 1990s and continue to study the history of the sport long before that. As an experienced motor sport reporter covering F1, MotoGP and the LeMans 24 Hour race, being part of GPFans has allowed me to work with a diverse team with all sorts of different backgrounds in watching the sport and given me a greater appreciation of F1.

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