Iñigo Anton Has a Race of his Own

Iñigo Anton has never attended a Formula 1 Grand Prix. He is already preparing for the possibility that, at his first, he will have to look away.

There will be drivers he grew up watching, people he would love to meet, a spectacle he has experienced only from a distance. Max Verstappen might be somewhere nearby. Anton hopes they get a chance to speak.

But he has come to Malaysia with a race of his own.

“Maybe sacrificing watching the F1 race, or maybe sacrificing trying to look at all the people around me,” he tells ALL-STAR, considering what it might take to stay focused. “Those are the things that I know that will help me.”

This weekend, October 2–4, the Baguio-based racer competes for Axle Sports in Formula Trophy Malaysia at Sepang, on the support programme for Formula 1’s return to the circuit. The announced field comprises 22 cars. Anton is its sole Filipino driver.

For an athlete who has spent much of his life working toward opportunities like this, even deciding where to direct his attention carries weight. He wants to take everything in. He also wants to leave with a performance worthy of preparation.

“I just gotta remember that we’re here for a certain goal,” he says.

In the weeks before the trip, that goal has kept him awake until one in the morning

At home in the Philippines, Anton has been training on the simulator he says he has used for six years. His sessions run from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., hours chosen partly to put him on track with competitors in Europe.

He wants the opposition. He wants someone to defend against, someone to chase, someone whose decisions force him to make better ones.

“Every night against the Europeans and other people, you get to practice how many races a day,” he says. “So it teaches you how to defend, how to attack against other people.”

Anton last tested at Sepang at the end of August. With no further testing available to him before the event, he has returned to its virtual corners, rehearsing braking points, gear changes and the speed he can carry through each turn.

By his estimate, the simulator’s F4 lap times sit within a second or two of what he experiences on the real circuit. The value is familiarity: arriving with movements already repeated, decisions already tested.

He is practicing concentration, too. A lapse has consequences long before it becomes a crash.

“Once the focus goes away, that’s when you start to make those little mistakes,” he says, “and they add up big time over the whole race.”

There is a long history behind those late nights

Anton learned to drive on a racetrack at seven and entered his first competition at eight. His father, veteran racer Carlos Anton, became his coach; his mother, Karen, his manager. In an earlier ALL-STAR interview, he recalled parents who initially hid their racing trophies, hoping their son might find another interest.

He found the steering wheel anyway.

His career grew through time attack, karting, slalom, and autocross, then into the demands of racing other cars over a full distance. 

By 2022, he had collected titles in Philippine Grand Touring, Radical racing and the Toyota Vios Cup’s Super Sporting class. A Formula V1 PRO championship followed in 2023, along with a second consecutive Radical title.

The same year, he made his F4 Southeast Asia debut at Sepang. In 2025, he won the series’ rookie championship and finished third overall.

Those results give him something substantial to bring to this weekend. They also leave him with something to prove against a field that includes drivers with experience across international F4 championships. He will be racing some former teammates, now wearing other teams’ colours.

“Once the race starts, there’s no friends or compatriots anymore,” he says. “It’s all about trying to be better than the others.”

The intensity coexists with a fan’s capacity to be astonished

Anton has already encountered Verstappen in online competition. He recalls joining a community race in which the F1 champion was attempting a last-to-first challenge. Anton qualified on pole.

“So he finished third, I finished first,” he says.

He knows the starting positions matter. What stayed with him was the speed of a driver coming through from the back and the peculiar sensation of seeing a childhood idol’s name on the same leaderboard.

“I get very starstruck right away,” he admits.

Sim racing has given him more than that story. In 2022, he helped SEM9 Flash Axle finish fourth at the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual. The following year, he reached the motorsport final at Olympic Esports Week in Singapore.

Now he hopes to see in person the drivers he has encountered on a screen. There is no arranged meeting to announce, no certainty that the weekend will permit one. Racing comes first.

Away from the simulator, his preparations have included strength and endurance work and changes to his diet. He says he has reduced his weight from roughly 76–77 kilograms to around 72 over the preceding month and a half.

One familiar comfort has gone: rice

“It’s a sad thing being Asian,” he says. “We all love rice, of course.”

The remark briefly brings the conversation back to a recognizable scale. Behind the international entry and the championship record is someone rearranging his evenings and his meals, trying to arrive ready.

He readily acknowledges the nerves. The spectators, the occasion, the chance to be se, all can intrude on the work.

His response is to draw on the races he has already driven.

“No matter what the circumstances are,” he says, “I just gotta treat it like every other race that I’ve done.”

The challenge is to make something extraordinary feel familiar enough to do well.

When the conversation turns to what his participation means for the Philippines, Anton begins with places much closer to home.

Clark International Speedway. Batangas Racing Circuit. The local events that people newly drawn to Formula 1 might not know exist.

He wants those fans to come and watch. He wants them to discover Filipino drivers they can follow, competitions they can attend, a racing community they can join.

He also understands the difficult question that follows a young fan’s interest: How do you afford to begin?

“Of course, with racing, it is one of the more challenging things to get into,” he says, “especially because of the budget and economics of it.”

His advice returns to the simulator. Toyota’s Philippine esports programme offers one example: the company describes a pathway that has moved competition winners into its real-world racing series. Anton sees both a place to develop skills and a way to make those skills visible.

He believes helping people find such opportunities is part of his responsibility

It is a practical ambition for someone carrying a national flag abroad. His own appearance cannot settle the question of access for everyone who wants to follow. But it can give that question an audience and give a young Filipino watching someone to ask about.

“I know that the Filipino talent, and it shows in any sport, that we can compete at the international level if we just have the right support and the right community behind us,” he says.

At Sepang, Anton will have two races to turn his preparation into a result. There will be timekeeping, competitors, positions to gain, and mistakes to avoid. The work he has rehearsed late into the night will become public.

He hopes to leave something for the people watching from home, too.

“I’m really blessed that I’m able to represent my country on the international stage,” he says, “and I hope that it also inspires new people to also do their best and hopefully also start to compete in racing.”

He knows what it is to watch a driver and imagine following.

This weekend, someone could be watching him.