Photo: Top Speed

The 2026 calendars for international Formula 4 championships F1 Academy, F4 South East Asia, French F4 and Nordic 4 have been revealed.

The all-female F1 Academy will continue to run exclusively on Formula 1’s support bill, with seven rounds in six countries. More can be read about next season’s schedule here.

F4 SEA’s calendar has been distributed by Evans GP, one of the championship’s teams. From its inaugural season in 2016 through to 2019, F4 SEA’s grid was centrally run by Meritus GP.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to no racing until 2023, when the grid featured multiple teams for the first time. There was no 2024 season, then this year’s calendar was almost identical to what is planned for 2026.

Sepang will host round one (April 24-26) next year, then the field heads to Thailand to race at Buriram (May 23/24) and the Bangsaen street circuit (July 3-5). Bangsaen was first visted this year, with F4 SEA supporting its grand prix. The final two rounds of 2026 are at Sepang on August 21-23 and September 18-20.

French F4 is still centrally run, and reduces from six rounds to five next year but retains its event abroad.

The first four rounds, at Nogaro (April 4-6), Dijon (May 15-17), Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium (June 19-21) and Magny-Cours (July 31-August 2), are in the same order as and in very similar dates to in 2025. Long-time venues Ledenon and Le Mans are dropped, and Paul Ricard returns on October 9-11 as the finale after a year off the calendar.

The Denmark-based Nordic 4 has historically been open to F4 and Formula 5 cars, and is now part of Nordic Championship Formula (NCF) which combines its grids with Formula Renault 1.6 cars from Sweden’s Formula Nordic championship.

In 2026, the paddock’s first-generation F4 cars will be retired and Danish manufacturer Aquila has developed a faster, halo-shod car taking technical inspiration from Formula 1000 to replace it.

There will be nine NCF rounds next year, with four making up the Danish championships. The season starts with trips to Padborg Park and Jyllandsringen, mainstays since Danish F4’s inaugural season in 2017, then Karlskoga features for a fourth successive year as the starting point of a three-round Swedish leg.

Sturup Raceway returns, having hosted Danish F4 in 2022, then the paddock goes to Kinnekulle for the first time since 2019.

Norway’s Hermann Tilke-designed Rudskogen track was raced on by Danish F4 in 2018, and it will host NCF next August. The championship is then part of the Danish Grand Prix at Jyllandsringen and Padborg Park’s Night Race event.

Ring Djursland drops off the schedule after nine seasons, but in October there will be exhibition races at Dutch Grand Prix venue Zandvoort.

2026 Nordic 4 calendar

The post International F4 championships reveal their 2026 calendars appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photos: Boxengasse Media

It has stuck with first-generation cars and its unique Formula 5 class, and is only increasing in popularity. But how does Danish Formula 4 see itself and what is it planning to do next?

Alex Stubberup Frederichsen is a cheery, and busy man. The former Formula Ford racer, mechanic and Iraq veteran has a day job, runs top Danish Formula 4 squad Team FSP and has also been the series’ promoter since the start of 2021.

At the most recent round at Jyllandsringen, Formula Scout spoke to him about the series and its ambitions. Starting with how long it will hold on to its Mygale M14-F4 cars while other European series move on to second-generation car designs.

As it turns out, there’s no end date set, and the FIA can’t set one either as “the FIA can’t decide on what I’m doing at all, because we are not an FIA F4 series”.

That means no superlicence points for its drivers, and none for those who go on to race in other series in the next two years if they have raced in Danish F4 aged 14.

“[The FIA] can do whatever they want and I can do whatever I want,” Frederichsen says. “I don’t want to throw away that [customer base by naming an end date] so we had to do something else, so we decided to put out a press release saying we will keep these cars for a long time, and even though if we get new cars we’ll still keep this as a B class.”

Whenever Danish F4 does switch to F4 Gen2, its FFord-based F5 class will be lost but it keeps a grid now with the same logic that not specifying an expiry date means car owners still see the logic in coming out to race every year.

Aside from keeping its current car for the time being, other plans for the future include staying on the bill of Padborg Park’s Night Race event (although getting an after-dark timetable slot is unlikely unless competitor and finance interest is there for it), looking for new series partners to go alongside tyre supplier Pirelli and a Sweden partnership.

The Padborg Park Night Race

F5 has representatives for its interests, with Frederichsen’s focus being making F4 as strong as possible in Denmark, and since taking on the job he has had to contend with F5 team boss and driver Mads Hoe beating the F4 cars in straight fights.

“Well, actually nothing happens. People didn’t really care,” Frederichsen said of the impact of that on F4 customer interest.

“And to be honest the balance of performance might be a bit biased towards the F5 cars. But then again Mads was 23 years old and everyone else was 14, 15, so there’s lots going into that. The really difficult BoP these cars are up against is that the F5 cars are 135kg lighter than this, and on a day that’s at hot as this, they just overheat the distance of the race. It’s just so much easier keeping his tyres under control than our F4 tyres. So it’s really difficult for us to keep up.”

The round Formula Scout visited at the Jyllandsringen actually featured Danish F4’s largest ever F4 grid of 11 cars, and Frederichsen thinks as long as the total grid size doesn’t dip below 10 then it’s a sustainable series to run.

“We don’t want a lot less than 10, then it’s not fun anymore. Because it’s difficult to get track time, and everything just becomes a whole lot difficult. But seeing where we are now, and the amount of cars that are in Denmark, people are interested because there’s a lot of people speaking about the series, and they see that we have more. Actually this is the largest grid we’ve ever been in Danish F4. There’s 11 F4 cars here, that’s the biggest ever. But we’re only 14 cars in total, because the F5 grid has declined over the years.”

His own squad, Frederichsen Sport & Promotion (Team FSP) contributes to two of those 11 F4 cars and has routinely been the outfit running the most drivers in the championship. But unlike the big F4 teams in Europe, many of the cars being raced aren’t actually owned by the teams.

“There’s a bit of everything. Sebastian Gravlund’s car is owned by his dad, Theodor Jensen’s car is owned by his dad. These [two FSP] cars are mine, and the STEP Motorsport team, he owns one, Victor Nielsen’s dad owns Victor’s car, and the grey one that’s a rental car for this weekend [being driven by Aurelia Nobels], that’s actually Noah Stromsted’s 2021 car.”

All-time Danish F4 statistics

Starts	Wins	Poles	Podiums	F5 wins
L Sonderskov 86	Hansen 13	Hansen 9	Mads Hoe 35	Mads Hoe 41
Mads Hoe 85	Jakobsen 11	Jakobsen 6	Nielsen 22	Daugaard 23
J L Nielsen 69	Mads Hoe 10	Lundgaard 4	Hansen 21	Hansen 12
V Eriksen 54	N Stromsted 9	Mads Hoe 4	Jakobsen 21	M Harritz 9
L Daugaard 54	F Vesti 8	Vesti 3	Pilgaard 20	Bramming 8
Mille Hoe 54	D Lundgaard 7	J Noda 3	Eriksen 17	Bjerring 5
A N Bramming 45	Pilgaard 5	Pilgaard 2	Lundgaard 15	Mille Hoe 4
M Jakobsen 45	Nielsen 4	Eriksen 2	Vesti 14	C Christensen 2
C Pilgaard 44	Eriksen 3	Stromsted 2	Grundtvig 13	Nielsen 1
C T Hansen 43	Grundtvig 3	J Dinesen 2	C Rasmussen 11

Stromsted was the star of the 2021 season, with the 14-year-old Dane winning nine of his 11 races last year. He’s only got two more days until he turns 15 (on July 29) and will be free to compete in Spanish F4 and the other European series.

While he is one of several home-grown talents to race in the series, along with the likes of IndyCar rookie Christian Lundgaard, Formula 2 racer Frederik Vesti and Indy Pro 2000 champion Christian Rasmussen, the series has also attracted 13 overseas racers since its 2017 creation including drivers from as far away as Mexico, South Africa and Singapore.

Nobels is the second of two Brazilians to race in Danish F4, as Emerson Fittipaldi’s son Emmo chose to race in Denmark last year rather than Mexico’s NACAM F4 series. He struck up a strong relationship with Stromsted, and an even stronger rivalry with fellow second-generation talent Juju Noda, and won two races en route to third in the standings.

His Formula 1 and IndyCar title-winning father spoke to Formula Scout about their time in the country.

“Emmo learned a lot in Denmark, to drive in the wet. Denmark was like club racing in England,” Fittipaldi said.

“Good people, I love Denmark. Very polite people, very down to earth, the way they treat us there. Arriving in the track, I remembered England when I started and it’s like a one-man show. The guy with the car on the trailer, comes out of the car, takes the racing car off the trailer, gets up the pressure on the tyres, helmet and drive.

“That’s the root of racing. In Denmark. And on a high level too. Very impressive, the Scandinavian drivers. A lot of good Scandinavian drivers. They love racing.”

Team FSP has recently bought three first-generation Mygales from British F4 team Argenti Motorsport now it is using Tatuus Gen2 cars, and will put Renault engines in them ready to run in Danish F4. A season of six rounds and six test days with the team could cost “around €70,000 + VAT”, considerably cheaper than other European series even before they switched to new cars for this year.

“We have two kinds of customers coming to Denmark,” Frederichsen explains. “Foreign drivers. One is coming because of age. So Mika Abrahams is that for this year. And Alyx Coby and Nobels, they are here because of budget reasons. Because it’s cheap to go racing. Not cheap, but a lot cheaper than German, Italian, British or Spanish series.”

The F1 juniors may all head to the above named series, but Frederichsen isn’t concerned about the quality of his crop.

“I’m not looking for the super drivers, I’m looking for having a championship that makes sense in a way that the point is it can’t be expensive. Here [at Jyllandsringen], the testing is limited. You can do three or four days, for formula cars, so you can’t have an exploding budget because there’s no more test days. Ring Djursland you can’t test at all, Sturup we can test everything we want. On Padborg it’s one per week, but you’re getting tired of testing at Padborg. So that way we can sort of have a championship where you can’t spend 100,000 on testing, because it makes no sense.”

Danish F4 has boomed in international popularity for fans, partly due to Fittipaldi, Hoe and Noda, and Frederichsen isn’t surprised it’s translated into more international drivers coming in the past 1.5 years “because that was when I took over and started doing all the stuff”, he laughs.

Holding dual positions puts him in a unique position, and “I’ve just said that everybody who wants anything or [needs] help that they can get whatever from our drivers, because I’m the promoter and I don’t want to hide anything” when it comes to rivals looking for assistance. He also personally encouraged several of his rivals to enter the series, including the return of former FFord squad Team Formula Sport.

There’s enthusiasm from Sweden for Danish F4 to bring its cars onto its shores more, particularly from the small and twisty Sturup Raceway which finally held its first series round this year after twice failing to during the COVID-19 pandemic. That would potentially raise Danish F4’s envious budgets, but there’s a wider plan in consideration.

FNordic in action

“We’re trying to set something up with the Swedes, but we don’t know yet what. They have the FNordic, now they know they have to bridge themselves from now until 2025, ‘26, when they want to do Gen2 F4s. They don’t want to switch to Gen1 now until then, so they have to gap that with their Formula Renault 1.6 car. So they’re keen to do something with us, so we might do two rounds in Sweden next year. [We’ll be racing] with them. Same grid.”

So in effect, FR1.6 could replace F5 as the secondary class of cars in the coming years, which could effectively save FNordic after its grid size more than halved to just five cars through the first two rounds.

“Yeah. That would be not a no-brainer, but close to. So that might happen. We do two in Sweden and they do two here, and then we do another three rounds in Denmark.”

There’s also a F4 series in Finland, Formula Academy Finland, which Frederichsen sees as a similar model to Danish F4’s but with F4 being the secondary class rather than the top one as the FAcademy series exists within the FOpen Finland championship that is also open to Formula 3 cars and other single-seaters.

“The problem is Finland is too far away for us to be interested [in racing there],” Frederichsen says, explaining how a combination of what are essentially club racing drivers and professional teams who are run by and employ people who have full-time work commitments away from the F4 paddock means the time it would take to travel to and from a round in Finland would require taking time off work on a Friday and a Monday, which is not possible.

“Sweden is doable. You need Friday off, and you can come back late Sunday and you can still go to work on Monday. So that can work.

“It’s not easy to do the championship when you think that, so that’s why we’re trying to do where we can do [and not beyond]. The plan, and there is nothing set it stone, could be four rounds in Denmark, four rounds in Sweden. That’s a Scandinavian championship.

“Four rounds in Denmark plus two in Sweden is the Danish, and the four in Sweden plus two of those in Denmark is the Swedish championship, and then Scandinavian is all eight. Because then you can have the club racers come, and you can have sort of the more professionals who do all eight rounds. That might be something for the next two, three years.”

Mygale founder Bertrand Decoster reportedly sees Danish F4 “as a brilliant way of having a small, national F4 championship”, but clearly with ever more interest from abroad it could really end up as the template for something much larger.

And keep your eyes peeled on Formula Scout for a look into two more of Danish F4’s teams, including how our weekend immersed in and helping out one of them went.

Additional reporting by Roger Gascoigne

More from Danish F4
Danish F4 title “definitely” on cards for 14-year-old Mika Abrahams
The Danish F4 do-it-all giving others a chance to take the 2022 title

The post How Danish F4 sees itself, and its future appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Formel4.dk

South Africa’s Mika Abrahams was the top scorer in Danish Formula 4’s visit to Sturup Raceway in Sweden.

Abrahams missed round one due to not yet being the minimum age of 14, but was quickly onto the pace at Suturp as he qualified second, just 0.047 seconds behind poleman Julius Dinesen.

His first F4 start was also strong, drawing ahead of Dinesen but not able to stay ahead. Dinesen led lap one by almost half a second, and thereon slowly expanded that gap to finish 3.308s clear.

Theodor Jensen and Magnus Pedersen ran closely in their battle for third, which continued until the end of the 19th lap when the race ended. However the chequered flag should have been waved after 17 laps, and so the outcome of their fight was taken from then when Jensen had just got ahead.

Alyx Coby beat Victor Nielsen in a straight battle for fifth, and Frederik Stena finished seventh.

Race two was far more dramatic, with Formula 5 runner Mille Hoe and Stena on the reversed grid front row.

Stena took the lead off the line, while there was drama for Coby who fell through the order before pitting at the end of the lap. Nielsen dropped places on lap two, allowing Dinesen through to then challenge Pedersen for second.

A messy battle then resulted in Abrahams passing instead and Nielsen getting through too, while Stena was alone up front. Series returnee William Wulf hunted him down though as the race went on, while Dinesen and Nielsen tangled just as the latter was making an overtake.

The safety car came out, after Wulf had taken the lead from Stena, and he didn’t get a chance to respond until the final lap when the track went green again. Wulf held on to take his third series win by 1.197s.

Abrahams completed the podium, and Mads Hoe passed Jensen to finish fifth.

Abrahams had pole for race three, and converted it into an assured first win. Pedersen started and finished second, and Dinesen made early progress to secure third. Mads Hoe passed Wulf late on for fourth, with Wulf then losing another spot to Jensen.

With pre-event championship leader Sebastian Gravlund absent due to Spanish F4 commitments, Dinesen is the new points leader.

Results round-up
Race 1 (17 laps)
1 Julius Dinesen STEP Motorsport 16m53.199s
2 Mika Abrahams Team FSP +3.308s
3 Theodor Jensen Team FormulaSport +12.936s
3 Magnus Pedersen MP Racing +13.389s
5 Alyx Coby Team FSP +21.370s
6 Victor Nielsen STEP Motorsport +22.069s
7 Frederik Stena SD Racing +49.370s
8 Mille Hoe Mads Hoe Motorsport +1 lap
9 Michella Rasmussen Henriksen Racing +1 lap
Ret William Wulf Team FSP
Pole: Dinesen, 59.030s
Fastest lap: Dinesen, 59.040s

Race 2 (14 laps)
1 Wulf 16m39.801s
2 Stena +1.197s
3 Abrahams +1.657s
4 Pedersen +1.973s
5 Mads Hoe +2.303s
6 Jensen +2.862s
7 Nielsen 3.241s
8 Peter Henriksen Henriksen Racing +4.494s
9 Mille Hoe +9.009s
10 Rasmussen +30.518s
FL: Mads Hoe, 59.795s

Race 3 (16 laps)
1 Abrahams 16m00.237s
2 Pedersen +1.276s
3 Dinesen +3.604s
4 Mads Hoe +12.773s
5 Jensen +16.444s
6 Wulf +16.959s
7 Nielsen +18.446s
8 Stena +31.772s
9 Coby +32.013s
10 Mille Hoe +1 lap
FL: Abrahams, 59.484s

Championship standings
1 Dinesen 91   2 Pedersen 84   3 Sebastian Gravlund 75   4 Abrahams 58   5 Nielsen 58   6 Jensen 53   7 Stena 52   8 Wulf 34   9 Coby 24   10 Mads Hoe 22

The post Mika Abrahams stars at Sweden’s Sturup track on Danish F4 debut appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: F4 Renault Denmark

The second round of the Danish Formula 4 season at Sweden’s Sturup Raceway has been called off due to travel restrictions between the two countries.

The June 12/13 race meeting has been cancelled with a week to go following a failure to make an agreement with Swedish authorities that would have allowed the F4 paddock to travel to Sweden purely for the time period of the racing action.

Instead, the promoters have now decided to cancel the visit entirely over the pandemic-caused travel restrictions and have quickly scheduled in a visit to Padborg Park as its replacement.

The round being substituted in will take place on June 19/20, and will now be the second of three trips to the circuit. It’s the same weekend that fellow F4 series Formula Academy Finland is scheduled to begin at Ahvenisto.

Padborg Park held Danish F4’s season opener last month, when Formula 5 driver and team boss Mads Hoe bettered the F4 contingent – including the returning Juju Noda and Sauber Formula 1 junior Emmo Fittipaldi – for a victory treble.

The first racing of the year at a track that isn’t Padborg is set to be round three of the season at Jyllandsringen on August 20-22. After that is a return to Padborg on September 4/5, then the sole visit to Ring Djursland on September 18 before a return to Jyllandsringen on October 2/3 for the TCR Denmark-supporting season finale.

There could be new drivers joining the grid for later rounds, most likely those reaching the minimum age to transition from karting or sportscars to single-seaters, and there’s also several signed drivers who were unable to make the opening round.

The post Danish F4 swaps out round in Sweden due to travel restrictions appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Danish F4

Danish Formula 4’s rescheduled season finale at Sturup Raceway in Sweden, planned for this weekend, has been cancelled following updated travel advice from Denmark’s government.

The championship was the first in junior single-seaters to get underway after Europe’s lockdown period during the coronavirus pandemic, but the final two rounds this month were then cancelled as a result of pandemic-related issues.

A one-day event at Sturup was organised at late notice, but the Danish foreign office has reccomended against visiting Sweden and as a result this Saturday’s season finale has been called off.

Team FSP’s Conrad Laursen, who led the standings with two wins to his name from the three rounds that did take place, has been named as the series champion by 20 points over team-mate Benjamin Frislund.

Italian F4 regular Sebastian Ogaard missed a round but completes a 1-2-3 for FSP in the points, with Danish Formula 5 champion Mads Hoe finishing fourth overall in the points in his self-run car.

Also in contention for the title prior to the cancellation were William Wulf and Juju Noda, who each won a race as rookies this year.

“A big thank you to both drivers and teams who have shown great cooperation and understanding through a challenging season with more adversity than success,” read a series statement.

“Thanks to Sturup Raceway and [circuit managing director] Flemming Schleimann for the quick response and great cooperation in connection with the launching of the replacement race for the F4 drivers.”

FSP dominated the teams classification, with Hideki Noda’s Noda Racing team a distant second in the points and Hoe’s own Mads Hoe Motorsport in third.

The post Conrad Laursen named Danish F4 champion as season finale cancelled appeared first on Formula Scout.

On Monday it was annnounced that the Jyllandsringen circuit would limit paddock attendance for its race meeting this weekend, with the decision to drop Danish F4 from the bill seen to be an adequate solution to that problem.

The championship responded with some stern words, and revealed it was already looking for a substitute venue to bring its season back up to four rounds. One has now been found, and the season finale has been pushed back one week.

“Thanks to intensive behind-the-scenes work, we have managed to give Formula 4 drivers a fourth race weekend in 2020.

“Together with Seven Racing and Arion series, the drivers in the Danish F4 championship are going to the Sturup Raceway next weekend, half an hour away from Copenhagen.

“The Swedish race track has previously been a popular feature on the Danish race calendar, but last time a Danish single-seater championship was visiting Sweden was in 2015, so the season ends with new territory for the vast majority of the drivers.

“Every lap of the Swedish tracks offers 2.09km of hard work behind the wheel for the F4 drivers. With great differences in height and a combination of both fast and slow-speed corners, there will not be much space for relaxation during each session.

“On the other hand there is a high probability that the driver at the top of the podium has earned the championship trophy.

“On Friday, October 30, a test day will be arranged at the track for the drivers, while the entire final round will be held on Saturday, October 31.”

With three races confirmed for Sturup, it mean there are six drivers still in mathematical contention for the Danish F4 title. Team FSP’s Conrad Laursen leads the way, and Noda Racing’s Juju Noda is the furthest back in sixth.

The post Danish F4 rearranges season finale to take place in Sweden appeared first on Formula Scout.