Photo: Meritus GP

There was plenty of F4 racing in 2024, with career-launching campaigns accompanied by winter warm-ups

Middle East

The go-to winter series for several years now has been Formula 4 United Arab Emirates, which races at Yas Marina Circuit and Dubai Autodrome. Prema’s Mumbai Falcons-branded cars were the ones to beat, and Italian F4 dominator Freddie Slater needed just two wins and four other podiums from 15 races to pip team-mate Kean Nakamura-Berta to the title.

Nakamura won the season opener in Abu Dhabi, which Yas Heat Academy’s Keanu Al Azhari started from pole, and Formula 3-bound Nikita Bedrin won for PHM Racing in the reversed-grid race. Slater won race three, and passed team-mate Alex Powell to make it two in a row in the opening race of round two. Al Azhari won the next two races, but Slater was on the podium in both to hold the points lead.

Bedrin turned pole into victory twice at Dubai, with Powell getting his sole win in the reversed-grid contest, and a double podium put Al Azhari on Slater’s tail in the title fight. A return to Abu Dhabi spiced up the season narrative in round four.

Prema’s Doriane Pin won race one from pole after on-the-road victor Nakamura was penalised for jumping the start, and Al Azhari and Slater collided on lap one. Although he was demoted to fifth, Nakamura still boosted his title chances.

Hitech GP’s Gabriel Stilp came through from sixth on the grid to dominate a wet race two, and all three title contenders failed to score. The weather was unpredictable for race three, and led to a mix of strategies. Al Azhari took the points lead by finishing third, as Prema’s Rashid Al Dhaheri won and neither Slater or Nakamura finished.

Nakamura took a double pole in the final round at Dubai, and after winning a dusty race one ahead of Al Dhaheri there was now a five-way title fight as his two main rivals could only finish fifth and ninth. R-ace GP’s Enzo Deligny won the reversed-grid race, Slater pipped Al Azhari to fourth to become his main rival and Nakamura stayed in contention by scoring two points.

Photo: F4 UAE

Al Dhaheri immediately passed Nakamura for the lead in the title-deciding race three and all but ended his hopes since Slater was sat behind him in third. Focus then switched to Al Azhari, who lost the title to Slater by finishing eighth.

Running concurrently to F4 UAE was the inaugural Saudi Arabian F4 season, where all cars were run by Meritus GP. Federico Al Rifai won twice in the first round at Kuwait Motor Town (in Kuwait), while in round two at the circuit, Saqer Almaosherji, Al Rifai, Andrej Petrovic and Suleiman Zanfari shared the wins. Retrospectively it was made a non-championship event, so Qatar’s Losail circuit instead hosted round two in March and Al Rifai took another double.

Eventually races actually took place in Saudi Arabia, and three rounds were held in Jeddah over the course of 11 days. Petrovic took the points lead by winning twice in the first of the triple-header events, with Al Rifai’s title ambitions hurt by missing a race. However he moved back ahead with his own double in the next round, and when the results of race one in the final round was taken back by a lap [without explanation] it handed Al Rifai another win at the expense of Petrovic.

Although Petrovic won the final race, it was too late as Al Rifai wrapped up the title the day before in a race won by Zanfari.

Over the last month there has been further F4 action in the UAE with the Formula Trophy. Al Dhaheri was the star of round one at Dubai, remained unbeaten in qualifying for round two in Abu Dhabi but for the second time lost a win to a penalty, and then skipped round three. A double podium earned Evans GP’s Kai Daryanani the crown, but Prema’s Sebastian Wheldon stole the headlines with his race one win.

Spain

Formula Winter Series featured a combination of drivers warming up for Italian F4 and Spanish F4, and MP Motorsport’s Griffin Peebles was champion of the four-round tour of Spain. Jerez was more wet and wild than warm-up, and the wins went to Andres Cardenas (Campos Racing), Peebles and Juan Cota (Drivex School).

Photo: Gedlich Racing/Daniel Burgin

Cardenas left with the points lead, but further chaos at Valencia’s Ricardo Tormo circuit put Peebles ahead. Cardenas won a red-flagged race one, Peebles was victorious in a delayed and safety car-filled race two and US Racing’s Matheus Ferreira led home Peebles in race three. James Egozi appeared on the grid with Campos at Motorland Aragon, and was announced as joining the Red Bull Junior Team. He proved worthy of his Formula 1 backing by taking pole and a win, while Al Azhari came over from the UAE to do the same with MP. Rodin Motorsport’s single-seater rookie Thomas Strauven won race two.

Storms at Barcelona limited track action until race two, which Peebles won from pole. He was victorious again in race three to seal the title. MP’s Maciej Gladysz was third in the points, and would be the most competitive of FWinter Series’ full-timers in Spanish F4.

His team-mate Lucas Fluxa won twice in the opening round at Jarama, but actually crashed out of the second race he won, then never had another competitive showing over the season. Al Azhari came to the fore at Algarve in Portugal, then team-mate Mattia Colnaghi was dominant in the first two races at Paul Ricard in France. Gladysz won the third, and took another two at Aragon before Al Azhari returned to the top step of the podium to hold a sizeable points lead.

Cota went unbeaten at Valencia, and while Al Azhari and Gladysz both made the podium they also retired in race one due to colliding and each had another non-score. Colnaghi’s two podiums made him a more likely title contender, and he stepped up to that status by being the form driver thereon.

He won twice at Jerez to become points leader in theory, but Al Azhari also claimed a victory and went into the final round 13 points ahead after winning an appeal against a penalty at Aragon. In race one at Barcelona, Colnaghi soaked up a lot of pressure from his rival for another win, then moved ahead on victory countback by winning race two, before a track limits penalty for Al Azhari cost him a podium and handed Colnaghi a big advantage going into the decider.

Cota cruised to victory, not quite enough to deny Gladysz third in the points. Al Azhari had another off-track moment and this time went penalty-free despite moving ahead of Colnaghi, who became champion in fifth as Al Azhari came home third.

Photo: Jakob Ebrey Photography

Two weeks prior, Valencia specialist Cota had claimed the Motorsport Games F4 gold medal at the track. He was pipped to pole by 0.007s in a damp qualifying session, but then won the qualification and main race.

North America

Starting, or rather ending the F4 action on this continent is NACAM F4 since the first three rounds of its 2024-25 season have already taken place. The Mexico-based series had issues with its switch from first to second-generation F4 chassis, delaying its season start by over four months and making it a multi-year schedule, and Jose Carlos Hernandez leads the way so far.

He won from pole in both races of the F1-supporting first round, team-mate Helio Meza bettered him twice at Autodromo Miguel E. Abed, and Alessandros Racing’s partnership with Campos Racing contributed to former W Series racer Nerea Marti joining their garage in round three this month. Hernandez took two more wins in Mexico City, but Marti pushed hard and took the second F4 win of her career.

United States F4 has also had an uneasy switch to Gen2 machinery, cancelling its first round and averaging just seven cars this season. The Australian drivers, Atlantic Racing Team’s Daniel Quimby and Crosslink/Kiwi Motorsport’s Nicolas Stati, and the latter’s New Zealander team-mate Alex Crosbie, were usually fighting each other for victories and Quimby (who went unbeaten at Mosport in Canada) took the crown by just 4.5 points over Stati.

The older cars continued to run in the Ligier JS F4 Series (previously known as Formula Development), which had bigger grids and far more entertaining action. Scuderia Buell’s Teddy Musella won a third of the races and the title, and Crosslink/Kiwi’s Kekai Hauanio denied him pole twice and took four victories and four second places to be runner-up in the standings.

Fifth in the standings was Brad Majman, another of Crosslink/Kiwi’s Australians, and he went unbeaten at New Jersey Motorsports Park.

Photo: Gavin Baker Photography

The same car is used by Formula Pro USA for its F4 Western championship, which cancelled its one-round winter series and also did not go ahead with its planned ‘Women Racing Series’ classification for female entrants. Majman and World Speed Motorsports’ Valentino Garbarino shared the wins in the first two rounds at Thunderhill Raceway Park. Kiwi’s Drew Szuch was the only other driver in round one, and World Speed’s Alexander Cornfeld their sole rival in round two.

Laguna Seca held the next two rounds, the first of which only featured Cornfeld and Garbarino. They took a win each, then Garbarino went unbeaten on the return visit as the grid grew to five cars. Jensen Global Advisors’ Athan Sterling finished second twice, and did the same at Sonoma Raceway where he finished last to newly crowned champion Garbarino.

Four drivers turned up to the Buttonwillow Raceway finale, and Garbarino led home Sterling twice more. Cornfeld finished third in race one, enough to earn him second place in the standings over the absent Majman.

The Skip Barber Formula Race Series ran using Mygale’s Gen1 car, and the title went to Andretti Global junior Oliver Wheldon. After a stellar karting career in the USA, the single-seater rookie wone nine races out of 14 but only very narrowly became champion since third-year driver Dean Lambros was just as consistent. He won four races and took four poles, and was only off the podium once while Wheldon went trophy-free twice. USF Juniors-bound Ryan Giannetta was the other winner.

Asia

The Honda versus Toyota battle occurs in Japanese F4 each year, and in 2024 it was a Honda one-two as Yuto Nomura was near unbeatable in the season’s second half and fellow junior Ryota Horachi consistently saw the podium to be title runner-up.

Despite the rivalry, it is the Toyota-linked TOM’S that is the spec engine supplier and its units were the big talking point of round one as 10 drivers were ruled out of race two at Fuji Speedway due to engine issues. After Toyota junior Yuki Sano won race one, Helm Motorsports’ Tosei Moriyama got the chance to turn his pole into victory with far more ease due to the absence of many of the drivers who would become the usual frontrunners.

Photo: Japanese F4

Nomura won both races from pole at Suzuka, Horachi and Drago Corse’s Hironobu Shimizu came out on top of a 37-car field on the return to Fuji, with Horachi taking the points lead, then Sano doubled up at a soaking wet Sportsland SUGO but only got points for one of those victories as he won a one-lap race.

The championship belonged to Nomura following that, going unbeaten at Autopolis (where rain caused a race to be cancelled) and Twin Ring Motegi then taking a fifth win in a row in the postponed Suzuka round that ended the season. That secured him the title, and Kageyama Racing’s Kotaro Shimbara rose to third in the standings by winning race two.

Chinese F4 was as entertaining as ever, while also mostly going overlooked outside of China. However it was a teenager from Sweden who beat all the locals to become champion. An F1 support slot at Shanghai attracted 27 cars to the season opener, and Blackjack Racing’s Alex Sawer and Fukang Jiang took the wins.

Venom Motorsport’s Oscar Pedersen won twice at Tianfu International Circuit, then had seven consecutive podium finishes at Ningbo and Shanghai to remain atop the standings while wins went to title rival Kaishun Liu (Black Blade Racing), Jiang, the returning Sawer and cameoing Mercedes-AMG F1 junior Yuanpu Cui.

The title fight went down to the final race at Zhuhai, with Pedersen and Liu each taking a win and a second place in the preceding two races. Black Blade’s Yuhao Fu dominated, his weekend lifting him from 10th to fourth in the points, Liu finished second with a diving penultimate lap pass and Pedersen became champion by finishing not far behind in fourth.

MP ran all cars in Indian F4, and ex-F3 racer Hugh Barter crushed the opposition at Chennai in round one.

The new Chennai Formula Racing Circuit, a temporary venue that had been a long-term ambition for the series and was designed to be raced on at night, hosted round two and Barter dominated from pole again in race one. That was held in the early evening, but race two was a proper night-time contest and Aqil Alibhai was victorious after forcing long-time leader Divy Nandan into a mistake on the last lap.

Photo: Indian F4

Barter did no more races, and on the return to the other Chennai track the points lead went to Alibhai as four different drivers won. Triple-headers at Kari Motor Speedway concluded the season in the final version of the calendar, with Alibhai going unbeaten in the first one then being crowned champion in a wet second visit to the track as Ruhaan Alva concluded a nine-race podium streak with two wins and a comfortable championship runner-up spot since Jaden Pariat was absent.

Australia

Currently in limbo is whether the opening FTrophy round also doubled up as the Australian F4 season finale. Originally ran from 2015 to ’19 by Motorsport Australia, the national championship was revived by new promoter Top Speed this year with second-generation Tatuus cars. The Bend Motorsport Park hosted rounds one and two, Sydney Motorsport Park had round three as the cancelled Queensland Raceway event went unreplaced, then the season was due to conclude with races at Malaysia’s Sepang circuit and at Dubai. The latter was down to Top Speed also promoting FTrophy.

But two weeks before the planned finale, the reveal of the all-Australian 2025 calendar was accompanied by the announcement that the AGI Sport team would take over as promoter and older cars would be reintroduced. Since then, Formula Scout has been unable to get a response from either promoter on the Dubai round’s championship status.

Regardless, the title was already settled by then as AGI’s James Piszyck had won the first nine races on home soil then did the minimum required to wrap it up at Sepang as Tiago Rodrigues, Cooper Webster and Daryanani won.

The older cars (both the Mygales previously used in Australian F4 and Tatuus chassis from abroad) were kept in use through 2024 in the AF04 class of the Formula Libre-style Australian Formula Open series. Car racing rookie Isaac McNeill (Volante Rosso) and Jayden Hamilton (Tim Macrow Racing) each contested five rounds out of seven, and McNeill went unbeaten in class until the final race at Phillip Island where Lachlan Evennett won. Evennett had taken a triple win at The Bend when he was the only entrant, with Hamilton doing the same at Sydney. McNeill took the title with ease thanks to his 13 wins.

Photo: Australian F4

Europe

F4 Central European Zone grew in popularity for its third season, and there was a big on-track rivalry between Jenzer Motorsport and Maffi Racing. Both titles went to the former, as Oscar Wurz became champion with a campaign built on consistency. He only won twice, both victories coming at the Slovakiaring, but 12 other podiums were enough for him to beat Maffi’s Kirill Kutskov who won at Balaton Park, Autodrom Most, Brno and then went unbeaten in the Salzburgring finale.

There were five other race winners, but Jenzer’s title outsider Max Karhan was the only full-timer amongst those. He took three victories on home soil in the Czech Republic, and compatriot Miroslav Mikes won at Most. The JMT Racing driver came fourth in the standings despite withdrawing from the final round, meaning AS Motorsport’s Michalina Sabaj was the only other driver to start all the races. Her best result en route to fifth in the points table was a fourth place.

The F2000 Italian Trophy had an F4 class this year, and Sergio Conti won it eight times.

F1 Academy

Supporting F1 at seven grands prix was the all-female F1 Academy, which was dominated by Rodin’s Abbi Pulling. The Alpine junior, a podium-finisher in Formula Regional when racing in the all-female W Series two years ago, was never off the podium and took nine wins, four second places and a third.

Mercedes junior Pin was best-of-the-rest in her first full year of single-seater racing after previously being a sportscar star, starting the season on top in Jeddah and winning two further times to be way ahead of Prema team-mate Maya Weug.

The battle in qualifying was slightly closer, with Pin taking five poles to Pulling’s 10, and she took four fastest laps in races while Pulling took six despite spending most of her time in clean air at the front.

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Marti took four podiums to edge MP’s Hamda Al Qubaisi to fourth in the points table, her team-mate Chloe Chambers won race two at Barcelona after Pulling had an airborne moment and Williams F1 junior Lia Block – an established rallying and rallycross driver in the USA who is the daughter of late off-road motorsport star Ken – came eighth in her first full single-seater campaign.

To find out more about the 2024 seasons of Brazilian F4, French F4 and Nordic 4, keep an eye on the Formula Scout website during the off-season!

The post 2024 International Formula 4 season review appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: ACI Sport

From Italy to India, via the new Euro 4 spin-off and the all-female F1 Academy series, there was plenty of F4 racing across the globe in 2023

Italy

The starting point of FIA Formula 4 as a category celebrated its 10th season this year, and organiser ACI Sport launched Euro 4 to partner its long-running Italian F4 championship. Euro 4 visited Italy twice and Spain once for its three-round season, while Italian F4 had two international rounds for the fourth time in its history as it raced in Belgium and France. That somewhat made the existence of the new sister series pointless.

As per usual, Italian F4 had huge grids , with an average of 33 starters per race. The 24-car grid for the season-opening race was the smallest, and the round at Paul Ricard in France attracted a high of 37 drivers. But only six of the 50 drivers that took part this year won races, with a further six making the podium.

Five of the winners drove for Prema, with US Racing’s champion Kacper Sztuka being the exception. His team-mates Zachary David, Akshay Bohra and Gianmarco Pradel all brought home podiums, with Brando Badoer and Ivan Domingues doing the same for Van Amersfoort Racing and Alfio Spina taking home BVM Racing’s sole trophy. He came 12th in the standings with a second place, three fifth places, two ninths, a 10th and 14 non-scores.

Although Sztuka won the season opener, he did not win again until race 14 of the campaign as he began a run of six victories in a row. After championship runner-up Ugo Ugochukwu beat him to victory in race one at Vallelunga, he responded with two more wins to end the season as well as his sixth pole in a row.

Sztuka became champion with a race to spare, and is now a Red Bull junior.

Photo: ACI Sport

A week after losing the Italian title, Ugochukwu went to Barcelona for Euro 4. The title was decided in a four-way fight in the final race, and it likely would have been five had Sztuka been present. James Wharton led Prema team-mate Ugochukwu by two points heading into the decider, but finishing fourth in a double-points race which Ugochukwu won meant he missed out on the title by 24 points.

Prema’s Arvid Lindblad and Bohra had been the top two in the standings with two races remaining, but dropped to fourth and third respectively. Had a regular points system applied to the final round, the absent Sztuka would have been fifth rather than eighth in the standings and Prema’s Freddie Slater would have been 12th rather than 10th.

Japan

For a series that runs over six months of the year, it can be a surprise that there’s only 14 races in total in Japanese F4. Once again it was the junior drivers of Honda and Toyota who were usually filling the top positions, and Toyota won its long-running rivalry as its drivers took eight victories to Honda’s five. The top two in the points were also Toyota juniors.

Rikuto Kobayashi started the season in dominant style, taking a lights-to-flag win at Fuji Speedway by 11.8 seconds. In race two he made a mistake under pressure and finished third, but was battling for victory at the end and left round one with a 15-point lead.

Unsurprisingly the Honda juniors came to the fore in round two at Suzuka, with Yusuke Mitsui winning both races from pole. A second and a fourth for Kobayashi meant his championship lead grew by five points.

The field was back at Fuji for round three, Toyota territory, but Honda junior Yuto Nomura pipped Kobayashi to pole for both races. Kobayashi had to battle hard race-long to win race one, then in race two he took the lead down the pit straight on the final lap. Over the weekend, he almost doubled his points lead.

Photo: Japanese F4

Mitsui repeated his Suzuka double in round four, while Kobayashi had a silly collision in race one and finished fifth in race two. The title fight was back on.

Sportsland SUGO hosted round five, and the poles were shared by Nomura and Bionic Jack Racing’s Kazuhiso Urabe. Nomura converted pole into victory, and Kobayashi climbed from 10th on the grid to finish sixth, falling down to third in the standings. Mitsui took the points lead by finishing second, and extended it with an identical result in race two behind Urabe as Kobayashi had an off and finished 22nd.

Six drivers remained in title contention with four races to go, and with the stakes raised the Toyota juniors hit form. Kobayashi led home team-mate Jin Nakamura in race one at Autopolis, then it a was Toyota 1-2-3 in race two as Nakamura led Shunji Okumoto and Kobayashi who was now top of the table again. Mitsui had finished 10th, but from 29th on the grid.

Kobayashi qualified on pole for both races of the final round at Twin Ring Motegi, and between safety car periods it was a battle between Nakamura and Kobayashi for race one victory. Nakamura triumphed, meaning five points split the pair.

He immediately got into second behind his team-mate in the decider, but was not fast enough to then pass him and so Kobayashi became champion with his fifth win.

China

Chinese F4 still uses first-generation F4 cars from Mygale, and grid sizes this year averaged 16 cars despite there being only six full-time entries. Six drivers won races, and there was an intense title fight between Tiago Rodrigues and Kaishun Liu.

Ruiqi Liu was the star of round one at Zhuhai, which was originally scheduled to take place at Zhengzhou. He took two poles, two wins, a second and a third from the weekend’s four races. But he was absent from round two at Ningbo, which was postponed by a week so it clashed with his Italian F4 programme, and Rodrigues came to the fore with three wins.

Photo: Chinese F4

Pingtan street circuit hosted round three, which also took place a week later than planned, and Ruiqi Liu marked his return by taking pole then claiming a win, a second and a third in the races. But he was outshone (only slightly since the top three in Q1 were covered by 0.079s) by his namesake and Rodrigues. Kaishun Liu took two wins and two second places, and Rodrigues brought home a win and three other podiums to look after his points lead.

Other drivers came to challenge them in the last two rounds, Yingjie Xu was the only driver to inflict defeat on them.

The ‘European-style’ Tianfu International Circuit was not ready to be raced on when Chinese F4 was supposed to visit it, so round four took place at Zhuhai. Rodrigues led Liu in race one until the final lap when Liu attempted to pass him down the inside at turn one. They both went off, gifting the debuting Xu victory.

Rodrigues won races two and four, extending his points lead. Liu retired following an off in race two, won race three and was second in race four.

In rather familiar circumstances, the season finale also didn’t go ahead as planned as the Macau Grand Prix dropped Chinese F4 from its schedule. Ningbo picked up hosting duties, and Liu took both poles, won three times and finished second in race three. Rodrigues won that race, and more importantly the title.

Mexico

A run of eight wins in a row did not neccessarily make winning the NACAM F4 title an easy job for Pedro Juan Moreno.

The start of his winning streak brought him level with Cristian Cantu at the top of the standings, and two races later he was 29 points clear. It took a further four races to add another 28 points to his lead, and it looked like victorious run would come to an end in race one of the fifth round at Queretaro.

Photo: Photography Yoss Yoss

Cantu was leading Moreno by a huge eight seconds when he threw victory away by heading to the pits. He finished ninth, and Moreno ended up winning by 10.2s and adding another 23 points to his lead.

The pressure was now on for Cantu, and he responded by winning five of the season’s last six races. But Moreno took a win, two second places and a third before skipping the double-header season finale since the title was already wrapped up.

Marco Alquicira was the only other driver to win, doing so twice. A non-championship round was scheduled to take place in Mexico City two weeks ago, but was cancelled.

Spain

Sztuka started his winning form in the Formula Winter Series, where he won five of the six races he contested and the title. His only defeat was inflicted by Matteo De Palo, who only did round two at Valencia’s Ricardo Tormo circuit and he took two poles, a win and a fifth place to put himself sixth in the standings despite missing three quarters of the season.

The final round was skipped by Sztuka since he was already champion. Meanwhile, his team US Racing brought two new names to the grid Zachary David and Akshay Bohra. The former won both races with fastest lap, took a pole position and netted fifth in the points table, while the latter finished fifth and second to be ninth in the standings.

Since many of that series’ drivers headed to Italian F4, it was a different set of names that were the benchmark in Spanish F4. The all-French combination of Sainteloc Racing and Theophile Nael beat the local teams to take the title, with Nael picking up eight wins, six other podiums and five poles to become champion with two races to spare.

A late charge by Campos Racing’s Christian Ho failed to make for a close title fight despite winning the last four races. Two of those were overshadowed with Nael’s crowning taking the headlines in one and Enzo Deligny’s antics being the big talking point of the season finale.

Photo: F4 Spain

Another series sophomore, MP Motorsport’s Valerio Rinicella was third in the standings and he took the chequered flag in all 21 races. He won two of them and stepped on the podium ten further times.

Deligny was Spanish F4’s top rookie, coming fourth in the standings with two wins, eight other podiums and remarkable consistency over the season’s 21 races. His disqualification was one of only six races he failed to be in the top five.

The next best rookie was team-mate De Palo, and while it took only three races for him to win he then only finished in the top five seven more times. Similarly Brazilian F4 champion Pedro Clerot kicked the season off with two wins and a second place, but never visited the podium again and slipped to sixth in the standings, and former Danish F4 star Noah Stromsted got three podiums in the first three rounds but only scored 50 points in the remaining four.

Middle East

Most European teams and their drivers went to F4 United Arab Emirates to warm up for their main campaigns. Prema ran its own cars and provided technical support to Mumbai Falcons, while Xcel Motorsport did the same with Yas Heat Academy.

Prema-run cars filled the top three places in the standings, winning 13 of the 15 races between them. R-ace GP’s Zachary David and Hitech GP’s Arvid Lindblad won the two other races.

Ugochukwu won the first two races of the season, then Ferrari juniors Tuukka Taponen and Wharton came to the fore. Wharton launched his title fight by making history, as he won the first ever single-seater race in Kuwait. Two of the next three races at the Kuwait Motor Town circuit were won by Ugochukwu, helping him to keep the championship lead to the end of round three. Taponen did the triple in round four at Dubai Autodrome, but it was Wharton who became points leader.

Rinicella was in title contention entering the final round at Yas Marina Circuit, but Wharton put one hand on the title there with two poles and then two wins. Taponen was the only one who could deny him the crown in the last race, and started third.

Photo: F4 UAE

Wharton immediately swept to the inside off the line to defend the lead, so Taponen tried going around his outside at the opening corner. Despite running well wide at the exit, Taponen managed to take second and was able to attack Wharton again into Turn 12 (of the grand prix configuration, as F4 uses the support paddock pitlane and grid). However both ran off track and then collided as they rejoined the track for the direction change at Turn 13.

Wharton’s suspension broke and he was out of the race on the spot, while Taponen was able to creep back to the pits but retired there and so Wharton became champion. Ugochukwu took his fifth win, more than the Mumbai pair achieved.

Two weekends ago there was F4 action in Bahrain, but it was for the non-championship Saudi Arabian F4 Trophy Event which ran as a precursor to the nation launching a series next year. All 13 cars participating were run by Meritus GP, and the races were won by Oscar Wurz (son of ex-Formula 1 racer Alexander), Suleiman Zanfari and Federico Al Rifai.

South America

Brazilian F4‘s second season had an average grid size of 12.5 cars and had a round supporting F1. Vinicius Tessaro won the title with a race to spare, taking six victories but only three poles over the course of the campaign. Matheus Comparatto was his chief rival, and he also claimed three poles as well as four wins.

Seven other drivers won races, including Alpine junior Matheus Ferreira, who could only come 18th in Italian F4 with a best finish of fifth but in a cameo in his home championship won twice.

India

Announced in August 2021 with a planned launch date in February 2022 and with all cars being run by Prema, Indian F4 got pushed back by nine months in January of last year.

Photo: Indian F4

A fortnight before its new start date in November the season got cancelled, and the next update came in March 2023 when it was announced that the second-generation Tatuus chassis would be swapped for Mygale’s and racing would start in October.

MP Motorsport was revealed in June to be the team behind the centrally-run field of cars rather than Prema, and in August the group behind a new street circuit in Chennai said Indian F4 would be part of its first event in December and have a night race.

Eventually a full calendar was released, and the season opener on Hyderabad’s Formula E circuit was supposed to host round one which would be in November. But it got relocated to Chennai’s permanent circuit just a few days before action began and the track also gained extra races when fomer F1 venue Buddh International Circuit lost its round.

The inaugural event did take place on November 4/5, and Cooper Webster won two of the three races to lead the points, but later in the month there was more calendar chaos.

Chennai was set to host rounds two and three back-to-back on November 30/December 1 and December 2/3, but it was announced that round two would take place on December 1/2 and round three would be postponed to December 5/6.

Rounds four and five were due to follow a similar format, running back-to-back on December 9 and 10 on the new Chennai street circuit. That weekend was revised to feature less racing and run as one round over three days, but still include the planned night race, while round five was moved to the permanent Chennai track and a December 16/17 date.

The second round of the season had a weather-shortened race, then Cyclone Michaung disrupted the series further. Round three was cancelled on the day track action was due to begin due to the cyclone, and its impact on the streets of Chennai meant round four was relocated to the permanent track.

To make up for that, Indian F4 packed its next Chennai trip with five races (albeit on the circuit’s short layout), and Webster won three of those. He clinched the title with another two wins in the final round, which was back on Chennai’s full layout.

Photo: KSP Reportages

France

Enzo Peugeot may have won the Pau Grand Prix, but Evan Giltaire arguably took the bigger honours in French F4 by winning the title in a dramatic finale. While just four points seperated the pair at the end of the season, there was a gap of 101 points to Kevin Foster who came third in the standings.

On wins it was Peugeot who led the way, with seven to Giltaire’s six and Foster’s single succes at Nogaro, while the pole positions were shared exclusively between those three. Giltaire got eight, Peugeot started in first place four times and Foster got both poles in Pau.

The top two in the championship both stood on the podium 13 times, with Peugeot doing so three times in reversed-grid races while all but one of Giltaire’s podiums came in the higher-scoring races. That helped make the difference in the title fight. Drivers who were not fast enough to challenge the title contenders but brought home big results because of the reversed-grid races were Garrett Berry, who came sixth in the standings after winning two of them and making the podium in two others, and Yani Stevenheydens who did the exact same but also finished third in the Pau GP.

FEED Racing France scholar Foster ended up with 10 podiums, as the Pau weekend actually ended up being his lowest-scoring of the year. After mastering a drying track in qualifying, he spun down to 26th place on the opening lap of race one and recovered to 17th after being lucky to avoid damage as the field rushed past him on the narrow city streets. He was not so lucky in race two as Adrien Closmenil wiped him out, and in the grand prix he spun twice and broke his rear wing.

Having traded victories through the year, Peugeot and Giltaire went into the final round at Paul Ricard 28 points apart.

Giltaire took both poles in qualifying, while Peugeot was only fifth fastest. Pole was converted into victory in race one by Giltaire, and Peugeot had his points lead more than halved by finishing fourth.

Photo: KSP Reportages

He started four places higher than his rival for the reversed-grid race two, but contact on lap one immediately ended his race and Giltaire’s rise to fourth place meant he went into the title decider four points behind Peugeot and guaranteed to become champion if he turned pole into victory.

He did just that, while Peugeot had a desperate time trying to make his way up the order to challenge him. He sent Foster into retirement in a clash, and when he eventually passed Hiyu Yamakoshi for second he was already 3.8s behind Giltaire.

Australia

Australian F4 ran from 2015 to ’19, and will be relaunched next year. But F4 racing has still been taking place in the interim on the sixth largest county in the world. Australian Formula Open, as the name suggests, is a Formula Libre-style series that features Formula 3, Toyota Racing Series and first-generation F4 cars.

Kristian Janev won the AF04 title by topping the F4 class five times in 12 races, while Brodie Norris took eight wins from 11 starts and finished just three points behind him in the title fight as both missed the final round. Chris Huang came third in the standings by contesting 15 of the 17 races and making the podium eight times but never winning.

USA

In addition to the United States F4 championship, which was won by Patrick Woods-Toth and had eight race-winners in 2023, there are several other ‘national’ and regional F4 series in the country.

Formula Development, which is rebranding as the Ligier JS F4 Series next year as it continues to use a first-generation car, is one of those and another is Formula Pro USA which under its portfolio has the F4 Western championship.

Photo: Gavin Baker Photography

Dmitry Pistolyako, who has spent over a decade running an online English language school, lived his childhood dream this year by not only becoming a racing driver but a title-winning one too as he started the F4 Western season with five wins in a row then racked up four second places to become champion by 84 points over Alexander Cornfeld.

Joining the grid for the final round of the season was F1 Academy race-winner Emely de Heus, and she finished fifth in race one then was disqualified from race two.

The F4 Western Winter Series had three cars for its four races, which were all won by Australian Daniel Quimby.

Ava Dobson was the only driver to contest FDevelopment round one at Road America, and Pablo Jose Benites and Aidan Potter shared the wins as the only drivers in round two at New Jersey Motorsports Park. Three drivers raced at Virginia International Raceway, with Teddy Musella and Caleb Campbell the winners. It was a totally different trio of drivers for the Circuit of the Americas season finale, and Cash Felber won twice.

Scandinavia

Pedersen pipped Pedersen to win this year’s Danish F4 title. That was Mikkel and Magnus, and between them they won 11 of the season’s 18 races. Their main challenger was Theodor Jensen, who won four times but only did seven races so came seventh in the standings.

Mathias Bjerre Jakobsen was therefore the true best-of-the-rest driver, taking two wins en route to third in the standings, but Algeria’s Leo Robinson was another driver with a better scoring rate than the champion as he finished every single race in second or third after joining the grid in round four. His 10 podiums put him fourth in the championship, just ahead of fellow part-timer Victor Nielsen. In fact, only four drivers did the full season since the champion Mikkel Pedersen failed to start a race. That’s one less full-timer than last year, but matching 2021 and beating 2019.

The Formula Renault 1.6-spec Formula Nordic also got assimilated into Danish F4 this year. They shared grids for the two Swedish rounds and the finale, and Linus Granfors managed to beat the F4 stars to win a race overall. Next year they combine as one series: Nordic 4.

Photo: Formel 4.dk

Finland used to have its own F4 series, but now it is just F4 racers who attend Formula Open Finland rounds and other racing events in the country. Nestori Virtala was the only attendee for several of those, against drivers in F3 cars, and also contested the Estonian Grand Prix in Eastern Europe.

FIA zones

F4 South East Asia returned after three years off, and began its four-event schedule with a first ever visit to China. There was a field of 10 cars for the opening round at the Zhuzhou circuit, and Jack Beeton won two of the three races.

A non-championship event at the Macau Grand Prix followed, and the grid ballooned to 22 cars with many stars of Europe’s Formula Regional, F4 and karting scenes attending. Ginetta Junior champion Freddie Slater set the practice pace while Prema team-mate Arvid Lindblad crashed, but the latter rebounded in qualifying as he beat the former to pole by 0.549s. Third fastest was Hadrien David, the 2021 FRegional European Championship runner-up.

Wet and windy conditions hit Macau ahead of the safety car-filled qualification race, which Lindblad won. Slater was second and two-time Macau GP winner Charles Leong was third. The track had mostly dried in time for the main race, where having pole proved crucial once again for Lindblad taking victory ahead of Leong and Rashid Al Dhaheri, while Slater suffered mechanical issues.

The series reconvened at Sepang two weeks later with an impressive 18-car entry list. Exciting newcomers included sportscar star Doriane Pin and karting graduates Kean Nakamura Berta and Tomass Stolcermanis. All three made the podium, but couldn’t beat David who took three wins.

Sepang hosted the finale with 17 cars the week after that and Nakamura dominated qualifying. But he couldn’t translate that into success in the races, even in the absence of David, and the wins were shared between Al Dhaheri, Nicolas Stati and Pin. Her victory made her championship runner-up behind Beeton.

Photo: Macau GP Organising Committee

ACCR F4 evolved into F4 Central European Zone for 2023, and attracted an average grid size of less than eight cars as it raced in Hungary, Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Ethan Ischer beat his Jenzer Motorsport team-mate Reno Francot to the title by two points, but only after a penalty was applied in the final race.

Needing only to finish second to become champion, Francot had appeared to be on course for that despite a late challenge from Michael Sauter. On the penultimate lap, Sauter dived inside Francot into turn one. As Francot then fought to regain the place, the two touched, forcing Sauter into the gravel and preventing any further attacks on Francot.

However, Sauter ended up finishing ahead of Francot, who was relegated to third by a five-second penalty. Therefore, the title went to Ischer as he took his eighth win of the season.

F1 Academy

The all-female F1 Academy series launched this year and filled the spot in the market previously held by the FRegional-spec W Series. It raced in Europe and the USA, supported F1, NASCAR and the DTM, and as with many F4 series was won by Prema.

The team’s line-up was led by Marta Garcia, who came ninth in Spanish F4 back in 2017, and she won seven races. The last of those at Circuit of the Americas meant she lifted the title with two races to spare, and also earned her a 2024 FREC seat.

Sauber junior Lena Buhler was her closest rival in the points table, and took the first two wins of her single-seater career. Two fifth places had been her previous best results from two-and-a-half years of racing in cars.

The Al Qubaisi sisters proved they can win away from their home circuits in the UAE, with Hamda victorious at three different tracks to put herself third in the standings while older sister and MP Motorsport team-mate Amna took two reversed-grid race wins and was sixth in the points table.

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Alpine junior Abbi Pulling was far from matching pre-season expectations as she finished fifth in the standings with a total of seven podiums but no wins.

The sole rookie was 16-year-old Chloe Chong, who despite being with Prema came 14th in the standings and never beat the sixth place finish she achieved on her debut.

2023’s F4 stars

The post 2023 International Formula 4 season review appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photos: Japanese F4

Formula 4 once again kick-started the careers of a large number of drivers this year, in series across the globe. Ida Wood runs through the FIA series, and some of the lesser-known championships too

Since 2014, F4 has grown and grown to become the de facto entry point for single-seaters. There’s series taking place on four continents, and Ollie Bearman won the two biggest this year. You can read our review of his double triumph here, and about his fellow trophy recipients at the FIA Prize Giving Gala below…

In a championship where gaps between cars can sometimes balloon on narrow circuits, it has to be said that Japanese F4 was the most hard-fought F4 series of this year.

Honda bowed out of the series at the end of 2019 after doing the title double for the second year in a row, and Toyota slotted in with its own junior team in 2020 and promptly won. It wasn’t a big surprise that Honda returned for 2021 to fight its rival.

Toyota had four drivers to Honda’s three, and the stability of a line-up mostly carried over from the previous season, but the experienced Kakunoshin Ohta led the Honda trio and it looked tough to call who could come out on top.

Newly-signed Toyota junior Rin Arakawa drew first blood by taking pole for race one of the Fuji Speedway season opener, but was handed a seven-place grid penalty for repeated track limits violations and it resulted in Honda’s Iori Kimura and Syun Koide filling the front row.

They turned that it onto a one-two finish ahead of Toyota’s Seita Nonaka, who was pipped to race two pole by Koide but had the path cleared for him to win when Kimura spun around Koide at the first corner. Honda’s hopes totally expired when Ohta locked up, spun and hit Toyota’s Eijirou Shimizu before plummeting down the order.

Shimizu fought hard to then complete a Toyota 1-2-3, and it may have been the race that ultimately cost Honda title glory.

Round two was a triple-header at Twin Ring Motegi. OTG Motor Sports’ Reimei Ito edged Nonaka to pole, but the latter dominated all three races to leave with a massive 47-point lead over team-mate Arakawa.

Honda was back on top on its home soil of Suzuka, with Kimura winning twice on the road. He kept his wet race one triumph, but a five-second penalty for a strong defence against Nonaka on a safety car restart cost him race two victory to Arakawa.

He didn’t let that knock him back, as Honda was in form again at Sportsland SUGO. Koide won race one, Kimura held off Ito to win race two, then was on course for race three victory too but got pinged for the same offence as at Suzuka and the resultant drive-through penalty left him down in 26th while Ito got his maiden win and OTG’s first since 2018.

Kimura was 18 points behind championship leader Nonaka at this stage, but aggressive driving earned him a win on the second trip to Motegi and cut that gap down to five points.

Arakawa claimed pole for race two of that weekend, but had Nonaka and Kimura overtake him on lap one. He soon led again though as they collided, and Arakawa went on to take the win and points lead.

Nonaka retired immediately, while Kimura dropped out of the top 15 but charged back up to ninth.

The final round took place at Fuji, and Ito took a double pole. Nonaka beat him to victory in race one, setting up a Arakawa-led showdown with Nonaka and Kimura for the title in race two.

Ito made a great launch from pole, as Arakawa and Nonaka went side-by-side into turn one. Kimura made it three-wide at turn two and snatched second, with Koide also passing Arakawa.

The safety car was then summoned after Dragon went off; Nonaka now leading the championship. On the restart Ito jumped away again, while the manufacturer juniors went four-wide behind.

Arakawa braked super late on the inside to go from fifth to second, but had a few corners of fighting Nonaka after. A four-car battle formed again before safety car boards were shown for a collision.

Ito immediately jinking right down the pit straight on the restart, but Arakawa went further right and braked late again. Both went deep, he led and Ito went behind Nonaka and briefly Kimura too.

Kimura slipstreamed past Ito, and Koide passed too, on the next lap while Nonaka chased leader Arakawa. After several attempted moved he passed him under braking at turn one on the penultimate lap, putting him back in the points lead.

The late braking brought the Honda juniors back into it too. Ito made a lunge, Ohta passed Kimura for third then got passed back, but Nonaka held on to win the race and title.

In the non-FIA JAF Japan F4, Seiya Motojima won the 10-race, seven-round season despite missing four of the races. He won every single race he turned up to, and was unbeaten in qualifying too.

The ‘Special Battle’ event at Suzuka that ended the year didn’t go Motojima’s way. He took pole and dominated the semi-final, but hit trouble on the penultimate lap of the final and retired, leaving Satoshi Kato to gladfully take the win instead. In Japanese F4 he didn’t have too much success either with Saccess Racing, coming ninth in the standings with one podium.

Kohei Tokumasu was title runner-up in JAF on dropped scores, finishing second five times after missing round one. The driver who lost out as a result was Hammer Izawa, who won at Motegi in Motojima’s absence and outscored Motojima too but had to drop 20 points after always finishing in the top four. He did however claim the F4 Association’s ‘Grand Champion’ title.

Rest of Asia

Photo: F4UAE

The year started with a ding-dong battle between Dilano van’t Hoff and Enzo Trulli in F4 United Arab Emirates, eventually won by Trulli after holding off van’t Hoff for third place in the final race of the season. Trulli went on to Euroformula, while van’t Hoff moved across to Spanish F4 where he dominated.

For the second year running Chinese F4 was beset by multiple delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but did include the Macau Grand Prix again and was often dominated by the guesting Charles Leong. His fellow Macanese Andy Chang became champion, with one win from 10 races, while Leong won all six of the races he started.

There should have been a South East Asian series in action too after the pandemic forced the cancellation of the 2020 season, but lockdown periods and travel restrictions prevented F4 SEA from returning and it now targets a 2022 comeback.

Europe

The tastiest rivalry in Europe ended up in court, as French F4 title contenders Esteban Masson and Maceo Capietto collided on the last lap of the season. Capietto was initially champion, but was then excluded from the Magny-Cours season finale and that gave the crown to Masson. That punishment was appealed by Capietto’s father, but it was not upheld in the national court of appeal of the French governing body FFSA earlier this month and Masson was confirmed as champion ahead of Australian Hugh Barter and Capietto.

• Feature: Why a former Grosjean rival made a brief French F4 return at Monza

Masson won six races in the centrally-run series, while Barter won twice – including the controversial title-deciding race, and Capietto was classified as the first placed finisher on four occasions but also got the points for victory from two Monza races where guest driver Elliott Vayron (who has recently tested with Drivex School in Spanish F4) won. French F4 Junior champion Alessandro Giusti won twice and made the overall podium four other times.

Photo: FFSA/KSP

Behind van’t Hoff in Spanish F4 was ex-Danish F4 racer Sebastian Ogaard, who led Campos Racing’s first attack at F4, and his team-mate Pepe Marti was third in the standings with two wins from his rookie campaign. He’s linked to a move straight up to FIA Formula 3 for 2022.

• Feature: How Spanish F4 boomed in 2021, and what it has planned next

Juju Noda brought a lot of eyes to Danish F4 again this year, after a very brief attempt at United States F4 with Jay Howard Driver Development that is understood to have ended before even making her race debut there in part due to a technical controversy the team had been involved in the year before in the series.

Noda’s battles with Sauber junior Emmo Fittipaldi, and their ex-Formula 1 racer parents’ responses to those, caught the headlines but the real star of the series were Mads Hoe – who won the title in a Formula 5 car in addition to running his own team – and Noah Stromsted who missed the first third of the season but debuted less than a month after turning 14 and won on his debut. A further eight wins propelled him to the title runner-up spot.

Jussi Kuivakangas was Formula Academy Finland champion after technical issues took down one of his rivals in the season finale. He sealed the deal with a dominant win over his other rival in the title-deciding race. Earlier in the season there was a starring cameo from single-seater debutant Tuukka Taponen, whose primary focus next year will be karting, under the watchful eye of Ferrari, despite winning his first two races in cars.

The Austrian F4 Cup was won by 17-year-old Patrick Schober, who has been racing single-seaters since 2018. While he rarely had any more than one on-track rival, and did miss the season finale, the Red Bull Ring round was contested by ADAC F4 drivers and British F4 champion Luke Browning took a double win.

The Americas

Photo: NACAM F4

Noel Leon followed up his 2020 NACAM F4 crown with the United States F4 title, but he had no successor to his first triumph. For reasons still not fully understood by those competing, the NACAM season was turned into a four-round calendar of non-championship events in Mexico and the USA and concluding with a support slot at F1’s Mexico City Grand Prix.

You can read about the confusion the loss of championship status caused here, as well as the full story and results from a season that won’t go down in the history books besides being a footnote in the oddly-advertised Formula USA.

The USA had several regional and winter series in action too.

Nine wins from 12 races meant William Ferguson cruised to the F4 Western title, after being runner-up last year. Before that, Nick Persing won the F4 Western Winter Series ahead of Ryan Yardley, with both then stepping up to Formula Regional Americas and making the podium.

On the other side of the USA a poorly-contested F4 Eastern series, from the organisation behind the Atlantics series, came into existence and it went the way of Christian Weir. An average grid size of 3.4 gave the Turn 3 Motorsport driver not much of a challenge, but the then-14-year-old made the podium in both of his US F4 appearances and performed well in USF2000.

He debuted in YACademy Winter Series, which is becoming the official winter series of the Road to Indy’s new-for-2022 F4 championship USF Juniors and is helmed by IMSA race-winner Gustavo Yacaman.

Nico Christodoulou edged Mac Clark to the title of the two-round series, and they went on to finish fourth and second in US F4 respectively. Weir came seventh and Noda was 11th in the standings.

F4 returned to South America in 2021 via the new Argentinian F4 championship, won by some margin by Federico Hermida. His points gap was huge, but the races were often very closely fought.

More on international F4
The route Bearman took to his momentous F4 title double
The question that has led Mucke Motorsport to leave single-seaters
ADAC F4’s record low grid explained, and why it will be a one-off
The youngest ever winners in FIA F4

The post The Formula 4 title battles you might have missed in 2021 appeared first on Formula Scout.

The series has held four seasons to date, with all cars centrally run by Malaysia’s former GP2 team Meritus. It kicked off in 2016 as a continuation of the AsiaCup series that was a follow-up to Formula BMW Pacific/JK Asia Racing Series.

Races have taken place on Formula 1’s Malaysian Grand Prix support bill, and F4 SEA has also visited India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. Before being cancelled altogether, there was plans for last season to race exclusively in Malaysia.

• Feature: A guide to modern-day Formula 4

The reveal of its 2021 calendar, which will likely feature 40 races spread over 10 rounds and include at least two visits to Malaysia’s Sepang circuit, is expected to come at the end of March.

F4 SEA’s 2018 champion Alessandro Ghiretti, a former Sauber junior, has been named as a Porsche Carrera Cup France Junior for this year as he moves into sportscar racing.

Several other pandemic-hit F4 series have also firmed up their calendars for 2021.

Formula Academy Finland, which was reduced to just two rounds last year, has bounced back with a five-date schedule that includes races at new MotoGP circuit Kymiring and also visits Kemora, Avhenisto, Botniaring and Alastaro.

Danish F4’s planned substitute event in Sweden from last season has now become a bona fide addition to the calendar, with Sturup Raceway hosting round three of seven.

Two years after it planned to launch, Argentinian F4 is deciding to get itself off the ground with almost half a season in Brazil and a trip to Uruguay before even racing in its home country in 2021, while a potentially unstable nine-round calendar that includes F1 track Circuit of the Americas has been released for the United States F4-linked F4 Western series.

The post Formula 4 South East Asia to reveal return plans next month appeared first on Formula Scout.

The loss of Formula Renault 2.0 as a popular route to Formula 1 means Formula 4 is now the de facto fourth tier of single-seater racing. It sits below Formula 3 in many countries, and is a modern sport success story

Formula 4 as a category has been around for over 25 years, but it wasn’t until 2014 that the FIA – motorsport’s global sanctioning body – decided to turn it into a standardised formula that could be used across the planet.

The long-lived Formula Ford (usually run in a wingless form with 1600cc Kent engines with grooved tyres) had only lost its legs as the most popular entry-level single-seater series a few years prior, and Formula Renault had often filled that role at the national level briefly before it joined FFord in going on a final decline.

Formula Abarth also existed in Italy, with the national championship expanding to hold rounds across Europe, and it formed the basis of Formula Panam in Mexico until the late 2010s and the Formula Masters series in China and Russia. The East Asian championship was internationally popular, but the organiser Top Speed brought it to a close at the end of 2017 so they could operate the new Asian Formula 3 Championship from 2018 onwards.

It was the Tatuus chassis builder and Abarth-branded engine that underpinned this spiritual predecessor to F4, and so it was no surprise that the all-Italian combination was the first to commit to FIA F4 in 2014, and later the second generation of cars that are planned to debut next year.

Several other chassis and engine manufacturers followed Tatuus into F4, the latter all with inline-four designs where the cylinders ran the length of the engine. There have been different capacities though, with Renault running a 2.0-litre unit in French F4, Ford providing a 1.6L EcoBoost engine to British F4 and Abarth actually the smallest at 1.4L.

That hasn’t prevented the Abarth-powered Italian championship and the German series organised by the ADAC from becoming the two biggest in Europe, and that’s because the Tatuus chassis leans more on aerodynamics than its alternatives and therefore arguably makes it better at preparing drivers for the leap up Euroformula or the FIA Formula 3 Championship.

In fact, it’s common for drivers to race in a series with Mygale car and then move on to a Tatuus championship if they don’t start in the latter chassis. Below is a list of all of the current FIA F4 series and what car they use, as well as the latest episode of our podcast, which looks at everything F4 from its modern 2014 inception to where it’s headed next.

You can also find it on Breaker, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, RadioPublic, Castbox, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Tatuus T4-014

Italian F4 was the first series off the ground in 2014 thanks to its FAbarth roots, and Ferrari junior Lance Stroll won the inaugural title. To emphasise that F4 was intended to be a starting place for aspiring junior single-seater racers, all drivers who had already reached adulthood were classified in a separate Italian F4 Trophy that had its own points system.

The Trophy drivers couldn’t compete to be the first ever Italian F4 champion, technically, but had it been the case then Stroll’s Prema team-mate Brandon Maisano – who was between spells in F3 – would comfortably have been champion.

Such was the popularity of the new formula the series was running to that a Winter Trophy was held in November where Prema driver Ralf Aron – now a team manager for the squad – starred with his first win before romping to the 2015 title.

Photo: SMP F4 Championship

Germany’s ADAC series was created in 2015 and used the same car, and Aron was one of the first drivers to dabble in both series at once. He ended up with one win from his four ADAC appearances, and it set a precedent for years to come.

Helped by those doing dual programmes, both championships were oversubscribed with entries at one stage. Now, ADAC grid sizes are only modestly into double figures – but made up of the biggest teams, often contesting dual programmes – while Italian fields remain larger, appealing also to smaller teams and privateers.

The SMP-branded F4 North European Zone also kicked off in 2015 with a grid entirely run by Koiranen GP – which then held its own Winter Junior Challenge in Iberia in December which was won by Enaam Ahmed. Car-running duties in F4 NEZ were shared with MP Motorsport for 2016, with the Dutch team also one of three in the new Spanish championship.

Doubling up in NEZ/Spanish was as common as a joint ADAC/Italian programme until the NEZ story came to an end after 2018, with both Richard Verschoor and Christian Lundgaard winning double titles with MP. The non-FIA affiliated Formula Academy Finland shared a grid with F4 NEZ at Ahvenisto in 2018, and has continued to run with small grids to the present day while SMP launched a Russia-only series for 2019 that has now also ended.

At the end of 2016 the first F4 United Arab Emirates season took place, and it has become the category’s premier winter series ever since. After four rounds of the 2021 season, Xcel Motorsport’s Dutch rookie Dilano Van’t Hoff leads the way as he prepares for a campaign in Spain during the summer.

The final F4 series to feature the Tatuus car is the Austrian F4 Cup. Few cars have entered in the last two years, with Italian F4 regular Sebastian Freymuth winning in his two appearances, but F4 has had a presence in the Europe-wide series since 2015.

Photo: AFR Pokale

In that first season there were five drivers, but the overall winner was someone driving a Dallara Formulino chassis – another F4 predecessor that was popularised by ADAC Formel Masters – on dint of the individual contesting two rounds. The other four drivers contested the Red Bull Ring round, with Van Amersfoort Racing’s Harri Newey and Mick Schumacher among them.

The Formulino chassis populated the 2016 grid, and in 2017 Andreas Estner was only one of two drivers in F4 cars. To reflect the lack of F4 cars it was renamed Austrian Formula Junior for 2018, and Formula 2 team Charouz Racing System ran a car for Tom Beckhauser. Next season features races in Austria, Czechia and Italy.

Mygale M14-F4

The global expansion of F4 in 2015, after its introduction the year before in Italy, came mostly with Mygale’s car design.

British F4, then known as MSA Formula as it had yet to claim the naming rights from Jonathan Palmer’s non-FIA BRDC British F4 (which would later evolve into the non-FIA BRDC British F3), kicked off with a grid of future stars and had a brilliant title fight ended by a moment of stupidity that put F4 in headlines across the globe for the first time.

Future Formula 1, IndyCar and F2 drivers featured, and there are already four grand prix wins across various categories among the alumni, led by champion Lando Norris.

China and Mexico also launched series in the second half of 2015, with the inaugural season of both running into 2016, with NACAM F4 kicking off with a non-championship round in support of the Mexican Grand Prix, and Chinese F4 also supporting F1 in 2019. A year later it got a grand prix of its own as it became the candidate series for the Macau Grand Prix.

F4 South East Asia, a continuation of the AsiaCup series that was itself a follow-up to Formula BMW Pacific/JK Asia Racing Series and which came into existence to replace the Formula Asia series that had begun in the mid-1990s, was the next series to adopt the Mygale chassis in 2016 and did so with Renault power.

Photo: Jakob Ebrey Photography

Danish F4 and French F4 followed suit in 2017 and ’18, with the latter similar to F4 SEA in having roots stretching way before the FIA’s concept for F4. New Red Bull junior Ayumu Iwasa is the reigning French F4 champion.

French F4 had used the ‘F4’ nomenclature since 2010 as a Formula Renault 1.6-based championship, and before that had been called Formula Campus and Formul’Academy since its 1993 inception. Only when it joined the FIA regulations in 2018 did it upgrade to 2.0L power and offered Renault F1 junior status for each year’s champion. The cars are still centrally run.

In the seven years where it ran with the F4 name but without the Mygale car, the series crowned the likes of the late Anthoine Hubert, Euroformula champion Yifei Ye and Formula V8 3.5-turned-sportscar star Matthieu Vauxiviere.

In Denmark the series has been straddled alongside what used to be Danish Formula Ford, now called Formula 5, and also offered Renault-sourced prizes for its champion. Frederik Vesti and Christian Lundgaard have starred on home soil there.

After the coronavirus pandemic held back plans to race in 2020, Argentinian F4 is set to launch this year with races across South America and with the same Geely engine that Chinese F4 utilises.

Crawford F4-16

Exclusive to the United States is Crawford’s Ligier-branded design, which is now used by three different series organisers. The highest profile of these is US F4, the FIA series that began in 2016 and has two of its graduates in Indy Lights this year.

Like Italian F4, it has been able to attract huge grids as each year has gone by, with a peak of 35 starters for the 2019 season finale at Circuit of the Americas.

While it has raced in Canada once, all of the series’ other races have been located on circuits in the US’s eastern states. Plans to incorporate the west of the country into the 2021 calendar failed after a rise of COVID-19 cases in California.

Formula Pro USA’s F4 Western series has remedied that somewhat, providing drivers on the western coast an opportunity to race F4 cars and also running a winter series for drivers who will then move east to contest US F4.

There were plans for a US F4 Winter Cup to take place this month, but that’s now been shelved. It’s not a huge loss though, as the Gustavo Yacaman-organised YACademy Winter Series is running on the same circuits with the same cars, teams and drivers and has already proven itself from its 2020 inception to be a great starting point for drivers headed to US F4.

Dome F110

Another nation-exclusive design, the Dome F110 has similarities to its European counterparts. Former F1 backmarker Taki Inoue claimed to Formula Scout to be behind that, but as with many of his stories, we don’t quite believe him.

Dome’s car debuted in Japanese F4 in 2015 with a 27-car grid at Okayama. By the next round that had boomed to 37 cars. The second season started with 35 cars, and once again got larger as 39 cars contested round two at Fuji Speedway. The grid size remained at at least 15 rows until round five of the 2018 season.

It was back over 30 cars by the end of that year though, stayed in the mid-30s through 2019 and even in the pandemic-hit 2020 season still attracted over 30 to each round.

JAF Japan F4’s open formula

Just as Formula 3 used to be known for its wide variety of chassis and engine combinations competing together, Japan’s original F4 championship has kept that ethos alive with a grid where almost every single car is different.

Young drivers have often competed in this more aerodynamic-heavy seres in parallel with Japanese F4, with Yuki Tsunoda the most famous example as he became champion in the JAF series one year before winning the FIA title.

West Racing Cars has been one of the chassis manufacturers with a more popular presence, and has had to develop its designs year-on-year to stay ahead of its rivals. There are engines from all of Japan’s major racing manufacturers to choose from, and suspension design is another area of technical freedom that’s really unrivalled in winged junior single-seaters.

Some of the chassis designs are based on FR2.0, and now it looks like old Toyota Racing Series and F3 cars could provide inspiration for the next crop of JAF Japan F4 cars. Mechanics learn their trade just as much as drivers do here, and the development of the cars in the series means it’s probably a push to even call this one F4 anymore.

Drivers that Tsunoda joined on the list of champions include ex-F2 racers Tadasuke Makino and Nirei Fukuzumi, Super Formula race-winner Toshiki Oyu and Toyota’s 2017 Super GT champion Ryo Hirakawa.

Signatech FR1.6

As the FIA was working on its F4 concept in 2013, a similar set of plans was being thought up in South America with the same F4 name under consideration. As the year went on, talks opened between Paris and Uruguay, and eventually it was agreed F4 Sudamericana would get underway in 2014.

The series was essentially a successor to the Felipe Massa-linked Formula Future Fiat though, which was supposed to be aligned with FAbarth but instead utilised Signatech’s Formula Renault 1.6 chassis (best known for being the basis of French F4 until it joined the FIA’s regulations in 2018) and Fiat engines.

For three years F4 Sudamericana ran with small grids and races in Uruguay and Brazil, with inaugural champion Bruno Baptista going on to race in GP3 and become a winner in Stock Car Brasil and 2015 part-timer Baltazar Leguizamon becoming title runner-up in Formula Regional Americas before also switching focus away from single-seaters.

It failed to get its season off the ground in 2017, instead running tests only through the year, but relaunched in 2018 as the Brazil-based Formula Academy Sudamericana and with the same technical specifications.

Juan Vieira won the title twice in a row, before moving on to the new halo-shod F3-level Formula Delta Brazil series that is powered and supported by Mitsubishi. There were no Sudamericana races run in 2020, but it could return in 2021.

Canada’s 3/4 litres

Last year the first proper attempt to establish an FIA F4 series in Canada was proposed, but it unsurprisingly went nowhere with the pandemic lasting most of 2020.

The country has already had an F4 presence for a long time though, with the 3/4 Litre Association running its own F4 Canada championship since the 1970s.

While similar to Formula Ford 1600 in size, these motorcycle engine-powered cars run on slick tyres and have wings, and laptimes in recent years have been faster than ever at some circuits.

The F4-based and F4-named series of today

The post A guide to modern-day Formula 4 appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: FFSA Academy

Isack Hadjar and Josef Knopp will make their Formula 4 UAE debuts in the third round of the season in Abu Dhabi this weekend.

French F4 Junior driver Hadjar, an outright race-winner in the championship at Spa-Francorchamps last year, will replace Austrian-Swiss driver Constantin Reisch at the 3Y Technology team as preparation for a second season in France.

It will be Hadjar’s first races outside of Europe in cars, having already races Ginetta sportscars in England. Dubai-based Reisch has struggled for results since joining F4 UAE as a graduate of karting, with a best finish of eighth so far.

Czech talent Knopp replaces Erwin Zanotti in Mucke Motorsport’s three-car line-up, and will be making his single-seater race debut.

Knopp has karted internationally for several years, with a highlight being third place in the Easykart International Grand Final for Easy 60 karts in 2016.

He has raced in OK and OK Junior karts for the last few years, and was 17th in last year’s South Garda Winter Cup in the senior category.

In 2019 he began a single-seater test programme with Mucke, based around its F4 car, which included Formula 1 venues such as the Red Bull Ring.

Over in the United States of America, it has been announced that the 2020 champion of F4 Western – the country’s secondary FIA-based series – will be an awarded a Honda engine lease to compete in US F4 the following season.

Canadian driver Marco Kacic won the 2019 title and is still pursuing a racing programme for this year. His predecessor Scott Huffaker was a Team USA scholar last year, and is already carving out a career in sportscar racing.

The post Isack Hadjar and Josef Knopp added to F4 UAE field for Abu Dhabi appeared first on Formula Scout.

FIA Formula 4 once again kick-started the careers of a large number of drivers this year, and with more Formula 1 support than ever. Rachel Hillman reviews the 2019 season in F4, from Australia to Spain

Germany

Coming from the British and French championships respectively, sophomore F4 racers Theo Pourchaire and Dennis Hauger fought a tense battle over the ADAC crown, and it was consistency that ensured it was the former who became champion.

The year got underway at Oschersleben with a dominant lights-to-flag victory for second-year Ferrari junior Gianluca Petecof, a win that surprisingly turned out to be the only one of the season for the Prema driver. Red Bull junior Hauger finished the race in third, two places ahead of Sauber-backed rival Pourchaire. Niklas Krutten fended off Sauber’s Arthur Leclerc to win on a drying track in race two, and his rookie team-mate Roman Stanek took an early points lead thanks to victory in race three.

Next up was the Red Bull Ring, and three more drivers took to the top step. The first race finished behind the safety car, with Hauger taking his first win after spinning off and crashing into Petecof in the second and third Oschersleben races.

Thinking his luck was on the up, Hauger beat Pourchaire to win race two by six seconds, but after its conclusion the Norwegian was given a 30-second time penalty, and front wing damage left him 21st in the safety car-filled race three. Prema’s rookie Paul Aron won that race, and was then named a Mercedes F1 junior.

In his only appearance, Mucke Motorsport’s William Alatalo finished the first two races in third and second respectively.

Photo: ADAC

Hauger took the top step once more in the first F1 support race at Hockenheim, despite contact with team-mate Krutten. US Racing’s Leclerc shone in race two, winning in front of his older brother Charles and heading Hauger and Pourchaire.

Zandvoort marked the season’s halfway mark, and two more new race winners. Rain fell before race one, and Alessandro Famularo gambled on starting on slick tyres. It paid off for the Prema driver, as he took the lead after most drivers pitted early to switch. Aron claimed race two, and Hauger’s Van Amersfoort Racing team-mate Sebastian Estner used reversed-grid pole to grab his first win in race three. By this point Pourchaire led Leclerc by 29 points, with Hauger 16 further back.

At the Nurburgring, a broken power cable for Hauger handed race one victory to Pourchaire, who then showed his craft in the wet to win race two by over six seconds. Stanek charged through the field in the final race, becoming the 10th true rookie to win multiple races in 11 years of the championship (and its predecessor ADAC Formel Masters), a feat last achieved in 2014.

With the field returning to Hockenheim one month later, Hauger was in the mood to assert his authority on the title battle. On the penultimate lap of race one, Pourchaire and Leclerc came together behind him while fighting for second, leading to the former’s first retirement of the year. Pourchaire and Aron stalled at the start of race two, and Hauger capitalised to dominate. He then came from eighth on the grid to obliterate the field in race three, the first triple ADAC win since Marvin Kirchhofer in 2012.

The season concluded at the Sachsenring with one point separating Pourchaire and Hauger heading in. R-ace GP’s Mikhael Belov intruded to win race one, as Pourchaire extended his points lead after dices with Belov’s team-mate Gregoire Saucy and Hauger. Pourchaire then won race two, as a late safety car denied Hauger the chance to fight him.

Hauger was gifted the final win of the season after Mucke Motorsport driver Joshua Duerksen was deemed to have made an illegal restart while up front and was given a 30-second time. Fourth place for Pourchaire in a dramatic race was enough to seal the title by one point, a margin that then grew when team-mate Alessandro Ghiretti was disqualified and Prema’s Oliver Rasmussen was penalised post-race and he was promoted to second.

Leclerc ended the year third on the podium and in the standings, over 50 points behind Pourchaire. Stanek held off Petecof, who picked up four podiums to go with his win, by one point for fourth place. He was way ahead in the rookie championship, winning by 89 points over Aron, and 141 over Duerksen.

Italy

After being pipped to the ADAC title, Hauger rebounded by winning five races in Italy on the trot and winning the title there.

Terrible luck once again blighted the Norwegian’s season opener, this time at Vallelunga, while Petecof racked up two wins (after a Stanek penalty) and Duerksen took one. It was here where Petecof’s aggressive but effective driving style worked best, much to the frustration of his rivals.

At a washed out Misano, Petecof made contact with and then beat team-mate Aron to victory, with Hauger overtaking his team-mate Krutten to win the second race before rain stopped play. After five races, Petecof was on 100 points, with Duerksen and Hauger on less than half of his tally with 44 points each.

Photo: ACI Sport

The momentum switched at the Hungaroring after the summer break. Hauger took a triple pole, and comfortably won the hot first two races. High winds, rain and searing heat hit race three, which began with Petecof falling down the order after stalling.

A red flag stoppage allowed him to restart at the front, and he capitalised to pass Hauger for the lead. The pair battled each other and the changing conditions, including a last-lap storm that led to them running side-by-side and getting “too close”.

Petecof didn’t win after that, and only took two more podiums, but he was still points leader entering the season’s second half.

The cancelled Misano race was added to the Imola schedule, where Hauger won three times and Stanek took a triple pole before claiming his maiden win. A collision with Petecof over the lead at Mugello prevented Hauger from winning all six of the races remaining after that. Aron inherited victory from their clash, which left him just short of Petecof in the standings.

Aron was second top scorer in the season’s second half, but his tally of 134 points was still 84 short of what Hauger scored. Petecof truly underwhelmed, as by picking up 64 points he was also bettered by Belov (who rose from eighth to fourth in the standings), Stanek (10th to fifth after missing a round), his lesser-rated Prema team-mate Rasmussen and rookie Red Bull junior Jonny Edgar – on pole twice in the Monza season finale for Jenzer Motorsport and with two podiums to his name.

Edgar would also have been second in the highly competitive rookie standings were it not for dropped scores, instead sitting behind the mostly dominant Aron and Stanek, and just ahead of Duerksen. Despite claiming only one rookie podium and no overall points, Cram Motorsport’s Daniel Vebster was fifth in the rookie standings.

France

In total 12 drivers won races this year, including its 14-year-old Juniors, and it was Hadrien David who left as champion.

David won straight away at Nogaro, ahead of Enzo Valente and Reshad de Gerus. Reversed-grid poleman Ugo Gazil won race two, but David went from eighth to fourth in the last four laps. He then dominated race three, and the dye was set for 2019.

The second round of the season took place at Pau, a unique challenge, and it was de Gerus who was first to win after a 12-car pile-up caused a lengthy stoppage. Valente won next after passing pole-sitter Bryson Lew early on, despite having a healthy lead cut by a safety car intervention, and David recovered from his own race two crash to dominate the wet final race.

Sauber Engineering-supported Stuwie White took pole but crashed during qualifying on the street circuit, and the two third place finishes he left with were the season highlight for the South African, who was in his third year in the championship.

David clashed with American Nicky Hays in the opening Spa-Francorchamps race, which left Junior driver Isack Hadjar to fend off White for the win. Junior rival Victor Bernier completed the podium. In race two it was another Junior, Paul-Adrien Pallot, who would take overall victory as a belated birthday present. De Gerus snatched race three by 0.091s after battles with David.

David returned to the top step at Ledenon, but struggled in two of the races. Mikkel Grundtvig utilised reversed-grid pole to beat Sten van der Henst in race two, and Hays dominated race three by 15.741s. His title challenge was already over though after five consecutive non-scores. David finished 16th after being penalised for clashing with de Gerus, who finished fifth.

The first race at the Hungaroring lasted only four laps due to heavy rain, and David was awarded half-points for a dominant win. Gillian Henrion added his name to the list of race-winners by fending off van der Henst and Bernier in race two, and David dominated once more to win the final race by 12.899s. However, he held only a very slim points lead over de Gerus.

The title fight heated up at Magny-Cours as de Gerus won twice. He easily brushed aside David in race one, and did the same in race three. Jules Mettetal had finished third in race one, but a penalty handed the podium place to Hays. Evan Spenle returned to the podium for the first time since Pau after beating guest driver Kakunoshin Ohta to victory in race two.

David took his seventh win in the Paul Ricard season finale, and wrapped up the overall title two races early in the process due to dropped scores. De Gerus qualified a lowly 17th and made his way up to 12th until contact with van der Henst forced him into his first retirement of the year. In his first single-seater race, French karting champion Sami Meguetounif finished a fine fifth.

Volant Winfield winner Mettetal took his first win in dominant style a race later, as David came home in third and de Gerus was 12th. Junior champion Bernier passed poleman David in race three and didn?t look back as he took his maiden win, which rounded out a comfortable Junior title win. Henrion finished in third, as de Gerus ended his season in a miserable 14th place.

David won the FIA title by 34 points from de Gerus, with Hays 10 points ahead of Henrion in third. The key to David’s success was his bonus points for pole positions and fastest laps, which equated to almost half of his advantage, as well as taking all seven of his wins in the higher-scoring first and third races of the weekend.

Photo: FFSA/KSP

Japan

Ren Sato was another of 2019’s commanding champions and was the series’ most dominant since its inception in 2015 and the second most dominant since the Japanese single-seater ladder’s third tier was created in 1990.

He was unbeatable at Fuji, Autopolis, Sportsland SUGO and Twin Ring Motegi, and were it not for a drive-through penalty for a jumped start in the second Okayama race he would have gone unbeaten there too.

At Suzuka he was second-best, with Honda Formula Dream Project team-mate Kakunoshin Ohta taking a win and pole double.

Atsushi Miyake, who won his HFDP seat through a SRS-Formula scholarship, inherited victory at Okayama and a run of four consecutive second places at Autopolis and Sugo enabled him to finish second in the standings.

Kohta Kawaai took four podiums to edge a close battle for third in the standings, although was sad to miss out on a win as his Le Beausset Motorsports team closed at the end of the season.

Media Do Kageyama Racing’s Reiji Hiraki pipped OTG Motor Sports’ Togo Suganami to fourth by one point after the latter retired twice in the Motegi season finale. Independent Cup winner Sergeyevich Sato was a pointless 24th in the standings.

Typhoon Hagibis caused the cancellation of the F1-supporting non-championship Suzuka round in mid-October.

Photo: Japanese F4

In?JAF Japan F4, won last year by Ohta, 24-year-old Kohei Tokumasu claimed the overall crown despite only winning two races – at Fuji and Tsukuba. Yasuki Kono, usually entered under the team name ‘CMS ? Rising’ took his Formula Renault car to second in the standings. Former Japanese Formula 3 driver Tatsuya Ota triumphed in the end-of-season Battle Round.

Spain

A race win in a 2018 cameo, a winning appearance in the Youth Olympics and some stunning Euroformula Open test times put Fernando Alonso and Drivex School protege Franco Colapinto firmly in the favourite spot for this year’s title.

The Argentinian did not disappoint, winning 11 races, taking 10 poles and 11 fastest laps and of course the title.

Colapinto only took one win the season opening Navarra round after a penalty and a collision that was not his fault, then at Paul Ricard was overshadowed by cameoing Jenzer Motorsport pair Giorgio Carrara and Edgar. At Motorland Aragon he did win, but also had two pointless races despite charging drives, and sat behind Praga F4’s Killian Meyer in the standings.

The Valencia Ricardo Tormo round in June marked the season’s halfway point, and this was where Colapinto upped his game. He won nine of the remaining 12 races, with MP Motorsport’s Glenn van Berlo topping the podium when he did not, and were it not for poor starts at Algarve in Portugal he would have been crowned champion a whole round early.

Jenzer returned at the Barcelona season finale to provide a challenge with Filip Ugran, but Colapinto still won all three races.

USA

Australian Joshua Car’s near constant podium presence for Crosslink/Kiwi Motorsport made for an easy national title win. The end margin between himself and DEForce Racing’s Kiko Porto was 79 points, with six wins compared to three.

Car?s strongest weekend was at Mid-Ohio, where he finished second in race one and followed it up by winning the next two races, as well as setting the fastest lap in each.

Jay Howard Driver Development’s Christian Brooks was the top local in the points in third, but should have been runner-up.

Brooks was disqualified from second place in the season opener for a non-functioning transponder, then nearly had a double win in the F1-supporting season finale at Circuit of the Americas. He rose from 20th to second in the first race, then was the on-the-road winner in the second race thanks to a last lap overtake. A penalty dropped him to second.

At Virginia International Raceway and Sebring, Brooks did at least get to taste victory, and his team-mate Christian Bogle won both COTA races. Crosslink/Kiwi’s other race-winners Jose Blanco-Chock and Arthur Leist were fourth and fifth in the points.

Briton Teddy Wilson won the Road Atlanta season opener for DC Autosport with Cape Motorsports, but didn’t visit the podium again after that and left mid-season. He still ended up eighth in the points, ahead of fellow part-timers Hays and Bogle.

Doran Motorsports Group driver Martin Kacic pipped World Speed Motorsports duo Rayce Dykstra and Kyle Loh to the Western title in a Laguna Seca showdown, while Logan Cusson won the?Western Winter Series for Jensen Global Advisors.

The rest

Ex-Red Bull junior Luis Leeds stepped down from Formula Renault and GT3 sportscars to return to?Australian F4 this year, and predictably dominated. He won at least once at every round for AGI Sport, and ended with a 99-points gap to Team BRM’s Lochie Hughes. Ryan Suhle’s third crack at the title resulted in a drop to third in the points, on a grid of only seven cars after the 18-strong Australian GP-supporting season opener. The series folded at the end of the season.

The?Chinese season kicked off two F1 races later, as a support for the 1000th world championship race. BlackArts Racing’s Conrad Clark was a rare foreigner on the grid, and the Kiwi showed off spectacular racecraft in his 12-win run to the title.

Mexico’s NACAM series was an F1 support at the Mexican GP, where champion Manuel Sulaiman took his first win. The home hero won 10 times for Ram Racing, four more than his Scuderia Martiga-ran American rival Jak Crawford.

Crammed mostly into January and February, F4 UAE?showcased some big talents in its dense schedule. Matteo Nannini, nephew of F1 race-winner Alessandro, took a comfortable title success before becoming a Formula Regional European Championship underdog, Duerksen warmed up for his ADAC and Italian F4 efforts with a starry run to second, and Omani teenager Shihab Al Habsi caught the eye with a few wins of his own – a feat repeated in Spain and South East Asia.

Malthe Jakobsen missed the first round of the season, but the Team FSP driver was a clear way ahead in?Denmark. He fought with Jonas Lindhard Nielsen in the first half of the season, before winning five races in a row and asserting his lead.

On the other side of Scandinavia, Markus Laitala was even more dominant in Formula Academy Finland. He won nine races out of 10, only beaten at Ahvenisto by cameoing rallycross star Sami-Matti Trogen. Nikita Aleksandrov was a distant second in the standings, and further down the order in the races when the championship shared grid with the SMP championship.

The FIA North European Zone series collapsed at the end of 2018, and a new Russia-based series was made for this year with the assistance of the team behind the one-year-old FAcademy Finland, and only Russian drivers were eligible to score.

Pavel Bulantsev won the first ever race at Fort Grozny Autodrom, then took four more wins to claim the inaugural title. Artem Lobanenko won six times but finished 30 points behind, although in his Alastaro double he finished behind Laitala.

Juan Vieira was Formula Academy Sudamericana champion for a second successive year, while Stefan Fuertbauer, who cameoed in Italian F4, won the Austrian Cup for Franz Woss Racing, beating former NASCAR driver Florian Renauer.

Chinese, Italian and Spanish reviews by Elliot Wood

Further reading
The unexpected success story of the first Motorsport Games
Scout Report: Sauber?s ADAC Formula 4 juniors
Scout Report: Paul Aron
Scout Report: Hadrien David
Scout Report: Franco Colapinto
Who to Watch: 2019 Formula 4
Why Sauber now has its own junior team

The post 2019 International Formula 4 season review appeared first on Formula Scout.

The 17-year-old currently races for Arden in British F4, and is eighth in the standings with two podiums to his name. Although mathematically still in contention to finish the season as runner-up, he is unlikely to do so.

Taking place on November 2-3, the US F4 finale clashes with the inaugural FIA Motorsport Games F4 Cup, which a few of the US F4 regulars could be headed to.

Joshua Car has already wrapped up the US F4 title, with second place still up for grabs between Kiko Porto and Christian Brooks.

The USA’s regional F4 championship concluded earlier this month, with 16-year-old Canadian Marco Kacic crowned the winner of the West Coast-based Formula Pro USA F4 championship.

The Doran Motorsports Group driver wrapped up the title at Laguna Seca in July with his seventh win of the season, enabling him to skip the season finale at the same circuit. World Speed Motorsports pair Rayce Dykstra and Kyle Loh were second and third in the standings.

Jose Luiz Muggiati steps up to Italian F4

Ahead of a planned assault on the 2020 season, Brazilian karter Jose Luiz Muggiati will join Cram Motorsport for the final Italian F4 round of 2019 at Monza.

The 16-year-old’s inclusion would make Cram the biggest team on the grid with five cars, increasing the likeliness of the Erba-based squad ended a losing run that stretches back to when the entry-level ACI Sport-organised championship ran to Formula Abarth rules in 2013.

Muggiati has won trophies at a national level in his home country, and is new to single-seater racing.

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A total of 17 championships and one special event will or have utilised the FIA Formula 4 concept this year, and the cars can be seen in countries as far flung as Argentina and the Philippines. As per usual though it’s the European championships, many of which are continuations of other entry-level series, that will attract the most interest.

Here is Formula Scout’s preview of the drivers and championships to watch in 2019.

Germany

If you’re measuring a series’ wealth by how many Formula 1 juniors it contains, then the ADAC championship has to stands out this year with seven of its drivers subscribed to F1 teams.

The team with the heavy hitters is US Racing, ran by former Mercedes-Benz DTM chief Gerhard Ungar and Ralf Schumacher and in league with Formula 2 team Charouz Racing System.

It will compete under the ‘Sauber Junior Team’ name this year, and fields?Czech karting graduate?Roman Stanek, French F4 race-winner and Junior champion?Theo Pourchaire, F4 South East Asia champion?Alessandro Ghiretti and?Arthur Leclerc, who is the younger brother of Ferrari F1 driver Charles and also a Venturi Formula E junior.

After impressing in the Asian Formula 3 Winter Series, Ghiretti is arguably the lead driver in the line-up, despite his limited experience of European circuits and competition, but both Pourchaire and Leclerc impressed in French F4 last year for their youth and inexperience respectively. Stanek, who was seventh in the CIK-FIA European karting championship in the OK class last year, made his single-seater debut in F4 UAE las month, finishing sixth in three of his four races.

Photo: US Racing

Prema, which took Juri Vips to the 2017 title, has second year F4 driver and Ferrari junior?Gianluca Petecof heading its quartet, although the 16-year-old Brazilian only has one podium to his name in Germany. His team-mates are reigning European junior karting champion?Paul Aron, younger brother of F3 race-winner Ralf, and Italian F4 midfielders?Oliver Rasmussen?and?Alessandro Famularo. Aron and Famularo will only contest selected Brazilian rounds.

Red Bull has split its juniors across two teams: Van Amersfoort Racing and Jenzer Motorsport.

British F4 race-winner?Dennis Hauger has joined VAR for his second season at this level (while stablemate and rival Jack Doohan moves to F3) and and will be joined at the team by?Niklas Krutten,?Ido Cohen and?Lucas Alecco Roy. Krutten won in his rookie season with Mucke Motorsport last year, and starred in F4 UAE over the winter.

Jenzer will be running a select number of rounds with?Jonny Edgar, third in the senior class of the WSK Super Master Series in karting last year, whose main priority will be the Italian championship.

Although it has no F1 juniors to its name, one of the most tantalising line-ups is at Mucke.?Nico Gruber has proven himself in the super competitive BRSCC National Formula Ford 1600 championship, Paraguayan?Joshua Durksen was one of the breakout stars of F4 UAE this year, and?Nico Gohler also made the podium in that series despite it being his first campaign in competitive motorsport.

Leading Formula Renault Eurocup squad R-ace GP cameoed in F4 late last year, and will return in 2019 with?Gregoire Saucy?and?Laszlo Toth, the former having shown good speed in testing against the category’s established outfits.

Italy

Photo: ACI Sport

Many of the ADAC teams are running dual campaigns in Italy, although there are some differences in the line-ups.

Mucke has swapped Gruber for?William Alatalo, a winner last year, and Italian karter Erwin Zanotti. Prema has retained?Amna Al Qubaisi in a fifth car, US Racing is only running Stanek and Ghiretti, and Jenzer has?Giorgio Carrara on its books.

Alatalo is one of the strongest bets on paper, although Petecof performed better in Italy than he did in Germany last year, winning once and finishing fourth in the standings. Carrara beat Alatalo in the 2018 standings, but failed to win a race.

Having adapted quickly to F4 in Britain, it would be sensible to think Hauger will do the same on the continent. VAR’s previous involvement in Italian F4 has been bit-part though, which is what could make the difference against teams like Prema with vast circuit knowledge.

Bhaitech came close to winning the 2018 title with Leonardo Lorandi, and returns this year with F4 UAE champion?Matteo Nannini?and Formula Academy Finland champion and SMP protege?Mikhail Belov. They’re sure to battling with the best of the dual programme drivers.

DRZ Beneli has replaced Ian Rodriguez with F4 North European Zone graduates?Ivan Berets and?Jesse Salmenautio. Both were competitive last year, but like the team itself is unlikely to be fighting for the title.

France

Photo: KSP Reportages

A place in the Renault Sport Academy is up for grabs for the French champion, and there are already several drivers who could stake a claim for the prize.

Sauber-affiliated?Stuart White is the most experienced driver in the field, and would be disappointed with anything less than the title after success last year in South African F1600.

Also returning to the championship is Junior runner-up?Reshad de Gerus, who finished second overall in two races last year, and 2018 guest drivers?Gillian Henrion and?Evan Spenle.

There are several drivers bringing in car experience from elsewhere, and they should all be fighting for the title.?Hadrien David is currently leading the F4 South East Asia standings and comes well-prepared, utilising the same training facilities as Esteban Ocon.?Simon Ohlin was runner up in Formula STCC Nordic last year,?while?Mikkel Grundtvig?and?Valdemar Eriksen have both impressed in Danish F4.

While?Bryson Lew?has some experience in the Formula Car Challenge, fellow American?Nicky Hays has won in the F1600 Championship Series and was a finalist in both of the big off-season shootouts that offered paid-for drives in the series.

Volant Winfield winner?Jules Mettetal will be under pressure to follow Caio Collet in winning the F4 title in the same year, while?French KZ2 karting champion?Enzo Valente?won the Nicolas Todt-backed Richard Mille shootout.

The most prominent of the karting graduates is world junior karting champion?Victor Bernier, who is joined in the Junior class for 14-year-olds by?Isack Hadjar, who won a free entry to the final round of the season by beating Bernier to the Trophee Winfield.

Ugo Gazil, Pierre-Fran?ois Duriani, Mathis Poulet and Paul-Adrien Pallot are all graduates of the junior karting championship that runs alongside the F4 series under the French federation’s academy umbrella, while?successful indoor karter?Sten van der Henst, who is looking to follow the career path of fellow Belgian Stoffel Vandoorne.

Japan

Photo: F4 Japanese

The Japanese championship usually has capacity grids, and 31 cars took part in last weekend’s opening round. The two teams to look out for are, as per usual, the ones backed by Japan’s biggest car manufacturers.

Honda Formula Dream Project has one standout driver,?Ren Sato, and after a slightly underwhelming 2018 season he’s already put down his title credentials for this year by winning the opening race. Team-mate?Atsushi Miyake was victorious the second race, just his third in cars, suggesting HFDP has at least two strong title contenders.

The 2014 CIK-FIA Karting Academy Trophy runner-up Kakunoshin Ohta was the team’s third car at the Okayama season opener, and took a surprise pole for race two. He looks quick, but has a lot to learn.

Toyota puts its support behind TOM’S, which is running?Seita Nonaka and?Hibiki Taira this year. Nonaka is already leading the standings, and was one of the stars of Japan’s domestic karting scene last year.

Le Beausset Motorsports’?Kohta Kawaai and OTG’s?Togo Suganami are the top returnees, and have stuck with the same teams they starred with last year. Suganami is joint on points with Nonaka, and his greater experience should come of use as the season goes on.

Spain

Photo: Racing Weekend

After a tricky 2018, where the grid started off with just eight cars, Spanish F4 is on for a resurgence in 2019 and has already provided drama in its first three races.

Much of the F4 UAE grid has moved to Spain, including the Xcel Motorsport team, and it is 2019 runner-up Shihab Al Habsi?who is currently the driver to beat. The Omani was an impressive karter, and was third best Junior in French F4 last year, but has come of his own this year.

He should be hard pushed for the Spanish title not least by UAE rival and team-mate Nannini, but rising Argentinian star?Franco Colapinto?too. Drivex School’s lead man, who has already impressed in F3 machinery despite his inexperience, won the first two races of the season opener but was then punished for a red flag infringement in the latter.

Even if further setbacks deny him being champion, he’s already gained the support of Fernando Alonso, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him in the Eurocup or Euroformula Open before the end of the year.

MP Motorsport could put a foot in the door of all three of their title ambitions with top Dutch karters?Tijmen van der Helm?and?Glenn van Berlo, plus Belgian?Nicolas Baert?and championship returnee?Rafael Villanueva.

There’s also a three-strong female contingent in Spanish F4 this year, and one has?has already won a race.

Global Racing Service’s?Belen Garcia?was the beneficiary of Colapinto’s penalty at Navarra, and like Praga F4’s?Nerea Marti?comes from the national karting scene. The last of the three is SMP-backed Drivex driver Irina Sidorkova, who aged 15 is already a touring car champion in her home country of Russia.

USA

After a tricky first season, many are expecting?Arthur Leist?to demonstrate the form of his older brother Matheus this year in US F4.?Crosslink Racing with Kiwi Motorsport team-mates?Joshua Car and Jose Blanco-Chock?will be best placed to stop Leist from taking the title, with both being repeat winners in 2018.

DC Autosport with Cape Motorsports’ Teddy Wilson, like Leist, failed to visit the top step of the podium last year but is the only other returnee who looks like a title contender.

There’s already 24 drivers signed up, with some of the more exciting rookies including rallycross and karting star?Christian Brooks (Jay Howard Driver Development) NACAM F4 star?Inigo Leon?(Jensen Global Advisors) and Ginetta Junior graduate Jonny Wilkinson?(JHDD).

Australia

The 2018 runner-up may be returning for a third season, but it’s the reappearance of former Red Bull junior?Luis Leeds that has got people looking at the Australian championship.

Leeds’s 2015 Australian F4 campaign, where he finished a winless sixth, got the attention of Red Bull and he was sent to compete in the British championship. Third place in the standings meant he was promptly dropped at the end of the year, and he had a difficult 2017 season in FR2.0.

After switching to racing Porsches last year, it was a surprise to Leeds make a move to F4 for ’19, but it looks like the title will be all his.

The rest

Photo: Chinese F4

Swapping America for China is New Zealander?Conrad Clark?who, after the publicity of winning on the support package of F1’s 1000th world championship race, should be on quite a high. The local opposition can’t be taken for granted though, as Jordan Depsey’s 2018 title battle with Luo Yufeng showed. The returning?He Zijian and occasional GT racer?Min Heng look like Clark’s closest rivals.

Hadrien David will miss the second round of the F4 SEA season to compete in France, opening it up to any number of drivers to claim his points lead. Former British F4 racer?Lucca Allen is best placed of those, along with karting graduates?Elias Seppanen and?Emil Skaras, and Danish F4 star?Malthe Jakobsen.

Jakobsen’s old colleagues Grundtvig, Eriksen and?Jonas Lindhard Nielsen?will all be having another attempt at the Danish championship, along with the country’s reigning Formula 5 champion Mads Hoe and karter?Largim Ali. Two calendar clashes with the French championship could rule Grundtvig and Eriksen out of title proceedings.

There are three new FIA-backed championships this year, all in very different locations. Argentina will start its own series in July, and several of the Asian championships will combine for a one-off event at Ningnbo International Speedway called the FIA F4 Asian-Pacific Cup, with the grid split into teams according to nationality. The United States also now has a secondary series called ‘F4 Western’, which is a rebranding of the Formula Pro USA championship.

After a successful first season, Formula Academy Finland will return this year, and the organisers plan to run a championship in Russia with the backing of SMP Racing after the demise of the FIA-backed F4 NEZ. The similarly independent Formula Academy Sudamericana is also set for a stronger second season after its FIA-less resurrection last year.

Further reading
The top karting stars of 2018
Why Sauber now has its own junior team
Denmark: doing single-seaters differently

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