Photo: Dutch Photo Agency

The long-time sub-F3 force on trying to reclaim its FREC crown from Prema, and why it’s expanding towards Le Mans with a favoured son

After winning both the drivers’ and teams’ titles in the Formula Regional Middle East Championship over the winter, R-ace GP is looking to continue its run of success back in Europe with young, quick and exciting line-up.

At the same time, the team has made the step across the divide to embark on a campaign in the ACO’s Le Mans Cup for LMP3 prototypes, the bottom rung of the endurance racing ladder, as a first step towards taking on the Le Mans 24 Hours itself.

Formula Scout caught up with team principal, Thibaut de Merindol, for a frank and wide-ranging explanation of the team’s plans for 2024 and beyond.

R-ace GP has been a leading force at the sub-Formula 3 level of junior single-seaters for over a decade. Formula Renault Eurocup titles with Max Fewtrell and Oscar Piastri, which launched the Australian on his hat-trick of successive junior championships, were followed by immediate success in the first year of Formula Regional Europe following the merger with the Renault Eurocup.

After a lean year by its standards in 2022, the team bounced back for 2023, narrowly missing out on the teams’ title to series nemesis Prema, as Martinius Stenshorne and Tim Tramnitz took the fight to Andrea Kimi Antonelli.

“For sure it was a good season,” de Merindol recalls. “I mean, I enjoyed the season, fighting. The team atmosphere was really good with the drivers.”

He insists that he “wasn’t disappointed” to lose out “by one point in the last lap [just] because Antonelli overtook car number 47 for sixth position or whatever.

“We did everything possible in the final round at Hockenheim, we won both races. It would have been very difficult to do better.

“Anyway, it was out of our control. I think we need to be focused on ourselves as always, we need to be focused on what we do, what we could have done better, and I think it’s not at Hockenheim that we need to have any kind of regrets.

“Maybe earlier in the season, for sure, we could have done better on some occasions, but Hockenheim for me was not the point of disappointment.”

R-ace GP came into the 2024 season on the crest of a wave after dominating in the Middle East, with new signing Tuukka Taponen trouncing an experienced field including Taylor Barnard, Rafael Camara and even a part season from Stenshorne, brought in to provide R-ace with a reference point.

De Merindol admits to being “surprised” at how well the FRME season went, “especially because the previous year we struggled.

“We did a good job in analysing what went wrong in ‘23. So, I think we arrived with a clear idea, or at least we were expecting, [although] we could have been wrong. We arrived there with the motivation to turn the situation around.

“I mean, even if we do this championship as a training championship, we wanted to perform strongly. To kind of reset, cancel or forget ’23, and even ‘22 [which] was quite average.”

He admits to being “scared having only rookies, to start on the wrong foot and then to be in catch up mode and then to lose the positive dynamic.

“I wanted to be sure that we would not have question marks, neither for the drivers nor for the technical staff. To know if we are good or not good.”

Photo: FRMEC

“That’s also why we asked and convinced Martinius to join, because arriving there with three rookies [with Zachary David and Kanato Le alongside Taponen), and then four with [Jesse] Carrasquedo, we didn’t know what to expect, so we thought it was good to have Martinius for the first three rounds to launch our championship and I have to say that he did it very good,” he says, before adding with a smile that “Tuukka was very fast to get the tow, I would say, on Martinius.”

On the back of success in the Gulf, and a promising pre-season testing programme, de Merindol is “optimistic” about the new European season, “because we feel prepared and we are very happy with the driver line-up we have.”

After three seasons with the same car, engine and tyre combination in FREC, plus the experience from the Middle East, he says there is still room to further improve the car.

“You can always learn. You can always optimise because don’t forget that we are fighting for hundredths, so sometimes very little details can make the difference.”

After analysing the 2023 data over the winter, he calculates the average gap to Prema over the season as just 0.05s. “If you improve a little bit, you can make the difference.”

On top of that, teams had “to adapt to the new front geometry,” which, as Formula Scout revealed, has been introduced by FREC to improve the car’s driveability, particularly for women drivers, and more power from the engine.

“I don’t know about the other teams, but I think we found a way to reset up the car. And when we did back-to-back tests with the old and the new geometry [there was] not much difference in terms of car behaviour and performance.”

Following his performances in the Emirates, Taponen is expected to head the team’s challenge in Europe, although the start of the season has not shown the team’s full potential as Prema’s Camara has won three of the first four races in his sophomore year.

Photo: R-ace GP

Taponen, like Camara, is a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy and his move away from Prema, the traditional berth of Ferrari’s juniors, surprised many.

Discussions with the FDA about Taponen’s availability began early, although de Merindol struggles to pinpoint the actual starting point, “because we have been in contact with Marco [Matassa, former head of FDA] and Ferrari every race weekend.”

“The last two years we were always speaking about drivers. Sharing, texting and then the opportunity came. We spoke about [James] Wharton at one point, and during the summer, we started to say, ‘OK, well, what are your plans for Tuukka?’” with a second season for the Finn in Formula 4 still being considered.

“Once he [Matassa] told me that they were maybe thinking about doing directly FRECA, I said, ‘OK, I’m interested.’

“I met him and his management, Jussi [Kohtola] and we had a good connection. Marco was really telling me good things about him and we had good feedback from many people, from karting and so on.”

After his stellar karting career, much had been expected of Taponen when he moved up to cars, particularly after narrowly losing out on the UAE F4 title at the start of 2023. But when he returned to Europe, it all went awry, finishing the year with just a solitary win in Italian F4.

“Part of the job [was] to understand the reasons why he didn’t perform as much as we would all expect. It has been a big discussion between us, from the first time we met.

Having not fielded Taponen in F4, the team has to work with “his understanding and analysis of his F4 season to try to understand, so I was not so much focused on what could be a technical explanation, from one car to another or from one kind of tyre to another.

“We were more focused on his mindset and the way he approached things during his F4 season from winter testing in UAE and then Italian.

“We try to learn from that and to not repeat this kind of scenario so let’s see if we he managed to keep him on the same level for the European Championship.”

Taponen is joined in the all-FREC rookie line up by Red Bull junior Enzo Deligny and Zachary David, a Filipino racing with a Maltese licence in one of the more unusual driver nationality combinations.

Deligny has had his own dramas with his racing licence, only gaining his French certification on his 16^th birthday in May, his age also preventing him from getting experience with the FRegional car in the UAE.

Deligny’s move to FREC was a surprise to some, having finished fifth in Spanish F4 in his maiden season in cars and with Red Bull usually being reluctant to entrust its juniors to FREC.

For de Merindol, such rapid progress is now the norm, at least “for the good ones. If you are top five, you do only one year in each category.  Now you have four steps: F4, FRECA, F3 and F2. It’s maybe one more step than it used to be but it also gives the opportunity to the drivers to do only one year at each [level].”

Two juniors, from different academies. Does that make life more demanding for the team?

“No, most of the time, the academies and the top management [groups] like Nicolas Todt, ADD or Infinity, are much more helpful, making everything easier than when you need to deal directly with the parents.

“For sure it’s a plus to work with this kind of organisation because they know what motorsport is about. We speak the same language, so everything is more under control and secure for us.

“We did not select the drivers according to the academy they were in. We tried to select the drivers, based firstly on who is interested in racing with us and secondly, the drivers we feel can perform the best with us, integrate into the team the best, share the same values and the same way of working, and then it’s quite long or deeply analysed process to select the drivers, so nothing to do with the academies to be honest.”

The deal with David came together “quite early last year, a bit like Martinius the year before, because we had the opportunity to do F4 UAE with him in ‘23.” he explains.

And de Merindol was impressed with what he saw, feeling that “he was a bit underestimated or underrated. I think we knew why from the UAE campaign, it was a lot about mental and also physical strength. He was very not prepared, neither mentally or physically but the raw speed was already promising, so we thought that signing him during the summer we had plenty of time to work on that.

“We felt that the people around him, the management was really keen to put in place what we were suggesting to do. And I think he starts to pay off.”

Indeed, in the two rounds so far, David has twice qualified on the third row, and while a mistake cost him a strong result at Hockenheim, he took his first podium next time out at Spa-Francorchamps.

When it comes to developing junior talent, R-ace GP’s track record is outstanding, and de Merindol believes that “the real good ones” should be able to adapt from the specifics of one championship to another.

“Naturally, one car can suit your natural driving style better or not, but this is the case maybe for the first two years of your racing career.

“For me, good drivers like Enzo, Tuukka or Zachary, must be able to adapt to any kind of cars or tyres or whatever, so they need to have the flexibility, the understanding, the overall understanding and the ability to work with each team to find a way to perform.”

De Merindol has made no secret in the past about the team’s ambitions to progress into other categories, notably Formula 2 and FIA Formula 3.

However, he is hesitant to commit, and while he may be keeping his cards close to his chest, the level of demand from rival teams also seeking to join the F1-support grids outstrips the places available.

While F3 will run a tender process this year to select the 10 teams to compete in the next three-year cycle from 2025, “we already know which teams will be selected,” he shrugs. “I think the only way to enter now is to have the opportunity to buy an F2 and F3 team together.”

Formula Motorsport CEO Bruno Michel has indicated a strong preference for teams to compete in both series, “and I understand his point,” says de Merindol. “It makes sense.”

“So, you need to have this opportunity [which] we had in the past with Charouz but in our case it has to be a possible business model.”

By which, we can assume, that it was not an entry fee that R-ace was willing to pay.

“Fighting against PHM to buy Charouz was not our business model,” he says, before adding, “we have to be patient”.

With options for expansion in single-seaters limited, the team has this year added an endurance programme, competing in the pro-am Le Mans Cup for LMP3 prototypes.

The driver line-up brings together the bronze-rated amateur driver, Fabien Michal, and one of R-ace GP’s favourite sons, Hadrien David, whose single-seater career had stalled after two frustrating stints with the Alpine junior programme and lacking the budget for the move to F3 his talent clearly merits.

Photo: FocusPackMedia – Marcel Wulf

Running the Duqueine M30 D08 chassis, R-ace was immediately on the pace, taking two poles, a second and a third in the opening two races, despite incurring a 30-second time penalty in France because “Fabien was too quick.”

Under the series rules, “when ACO considers that the bronze driver was too fast during his stint in the race, you get a time penalty for the following race. It’s kind of a BOP [Balance of Performance] but for drivers not the cars,” explains de Merindol.

The team is on a steep learning curve in endurance racing, “discovering the category and endurance, [and] we did not manage to put everything together on the races,” failing to hook up two strong stints in the same race.

“Next race, we will try to do the first stint good and the second stint good and then maybe, finally, we will be able to win a race.”

A reinvigorated David shares the positive outlook for the rest of the season: “We are against very good teams who did the Le Mans Cup since a few years, so it’s a really good start.”

The sideways step to endurance racing was born of two main considerations, explains de Merindol: “First of all, because I think it’s good for the team to see something else than single-seaters and what we are used to doing in F4 and FRECA. It creates a fresh new challenge with a totally different approach [which] is quite refreshing for the team.”

With no F3 on the horizon, endurance provides the necessary “new challenge for the mechanics, the engineers and for myself,” he says.

“But secondly, because we can feel that endurance is really developing, with all the constructors coming. In hypercars, there are now seven or eight constructors. This will provide plenty of paid opportunities for drivers to leave the single-seater pyramid earlier to go to endurance, as we can start to see with [former R-ace GP FREC driver, Lorenzo] Fluxa and [Frederik] Vesti.

“I think we will see more and more drivers moving from single-seaters to endurance earlier than after two or three years of F2 and knocking at the door of F1 for three years in a row.”

And, of course, that means offering its drivers, who lack the budget or “the pure sporting momentum or potential to really go to F1,” with the chance to continue their careers within the R-ace GP stable.

Positive feedback from David after testing the car eased de Merindol’s initial fears that the LMP3 might not offer enough of a challenge for drivers coming from FREC, as the prototype is both enjoyable to drive and “even faster than FREC, [by] around 2-3 seconds.”

Indeed, David has been pleasantly surprised by the performance of the LMP3 car after coming from single-seaters. “When I jumped into an LMP3 car, it really felt like home already, because it has the same behaviour as a single-seater. We just have a bit more engine power and a bit less downforce. But in the end, it’s still faster on one lap and the tyres are really good.”

De Merindol makes no secret of his admiration for David who has raced for the team in F4 and FREC, finishing runner-up in 2021, as well as acting as a driver coach.

“It’s nice to have Hadrien with us, first of all because he’s a very quick driver but also [because he is] very good to work with as a team member.”

Entering a new category with a new car, having a trusted partner in the cockpit “was a big advantage. We understand each other, he knows how we work. We know how he is. So it just made everything more efficient and easier.

“For him I hope it’s an opportunity to relaunch his sporting career,” he adds.

David, himself, is equally happy to be back in the driver’s seat and within the embrace of a team he loves and where he “had the best performance in the past in FREC.”

R-ace GP is “like a family for me. I spend more time with Thibaut than with my father. He has always believed in me and helped me so much in my racing career,” he enthuses. “I want to thank Thibaut for the opportunity.”

“To start a new project with them was the best thing that could ever happen to me,” he tells Formula Scout.

Having lost the support of Alpine, who was “supposed to pay a big part of my season, I couldn’t find any programme,” David says of his 2023. After a potential deal with MP Motorsport to race in F3 in 2024 failed to materialise, R-ace was “the only team who called me and helped me to race for good conditions.”

He accepts, at least outwardly, that his single-seater career has reached its end point. “We all know that money is everything in this sport and to enter the best teams we need a lot. I think it’s better to start this new project with R-ace, which is a top team, as strong as Prema.”

For a driver that raced against and beat drivers such as F2 front runners Isack Hadjar and Gabriel Bortoleto as R-ace GP team-mates in FREC, there is clearly a lingering sense of hurt at how things turned out. “I see people that were a lot slower than me going up in the categories that I beat easily and when I see that I am blocked in a category and I cannot find the money to go up, it’s very frustrating.”

“It may be frustrating to not be in F2 now with all the drivers I raced against but probably in a few years we will meet again in endurance, in LMP2 or hypercars,” he concludes, and given the lack of F1 opportunities, even for F1 junior drivers, and the rapid growth of endurance racing, he may well be right.

For R-ace GP, the future strategy is clear: “We know what we want to do. We want to do LMP2. We want to do ELMS. We want to do the 24 Hours of Le Mans,” de Merindol says without hesitation.

Even if direction of travel is clear, the timeline is not. “I don’t know when. First, we need to understand when they will introduce a new car. It should be ‘26, but it’s under discussion.

“Secondly, we need to get an entry in the championship and we know it’s not that easy.

“And third – or maybe first – we need to deserve it. It means that we need to learn endurance, to deserve being in LMP2 in ELMS. So, first we need to do a good job this year in LMP3 and to take the opportunity as soon as it comes to go to LMP2,” he explains, confirming that “anyway we will keep LMP3.”

Not surprisingly, David is in a hurry to move up, and to do so with R-ace. “We would love to be on the LMP2 grid in 2025, even if I think it will be too tight. But we will target 2026 and we will try to prepare it as much as possible in LMP3.”

For the moment, however, a step to the top tier in hypercars, potentially running a customer Alpine or Peugeot, is not in R-ace GP’s plans. “Never say never, but this is a too long term project to be able to have the ambition to do it, but we know we can do LMP2.”

Hadrien David interview by Alejandro Alonso Lopez

The post R-ace GP bids to regain Regional supremacy while looking to Le Mans appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: TGR NZ

The Formula Regional category’s second-generation chassis will not race until 2026, Formula Scout has learned.

Last year the World Motor Sport Council approved the introduction of new designs for the first quarter of 2025, but this timetable has now been put back 12 months with broad agreement from various championships and teams.

FRegional launched in 2018, and there are three chassis suppliers globally. Tatuus’s T-318, raced in the European and Middle East championships, has provided the basis for FRegional Oceania’s car and the non-FRegional-spec vehicles of Eurocup-3 and GB3.

The FIA Single-Seater Commission’s outgoing president Gian Carlo Minardi told Formula Scout that the “introduction of the second-generation [chassis] has been delayed” until 2026.

“COVID-19 caused a delay of two years in the homologation of the new car, but the car itself has already been designed,” he added. “All of the technical specifications have been fixed.”

R-ace GP team principal Thibaut de Merindol said that FREC’s organisers “asked us if we were happy to keep the [T-318] for one more year and I think all the teams said yes”, and that any difference in implementation timetables around the world “would have been a mess” as his team and several others race their their cars in FRME and FREC.

“What’s important is that all the FRegional championships introduce the new car in the same year, so I think this is now agreed. FREC is giving the tempo and wants to introduce the new car in ’26 so the Middle East and all the other championships will follow.”

Nicolas Caillol, motorsport manager for FRegional Oceania organiser Toyota Gazoo Racing New Zealand, told Formula Scout that discussions with the FIA and Tatuus regarding the design and cost of the new car “began about a year ago”.

Visually it should “follow the same trend that Formula 2 has gone, although not as radical because there is no DRS in FRegional”.

Tatuus’s second-generation chassis is therefore expected to follow the aerodynamic direction of Eurocup-3.

In addition to performance and safety improvements, Caillol said it should feature improved ergonomics “to be able to accommodate a wider range of driver profiles, short and tall, as well as women”.

His championship was keen to maximise the economic life of the current cars, given the “big investment” associated with introducing new designs.

“The FIA has been listening to the championships and has been cautious about the economics which are critical for every championship and every competitor,” he said.

“In New Zealand, we weren’t able to use the car for [one] year because of COVID-19. In terms of our investment and to get our money’s worth, having an extra year of usage was better for us. It was the same reaction from FREC, the US and Japan.”

Caillol expects an increase in the base price of around 20-25% compared to when the current cars were new, “to around €125,000-€130,000”. The decision to stick with Tatuus going forward was a “no-brainer” since it has provided chassis for FRegional Oceania and its Toyota Racing Series predecessor since 2005.

The post Introduction of second-generation FRegional chassis delayed to 2026 appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photos: Sebastiaan Roozendaal / Dutch Photo Agency

There was an end-of-term feeling during the latest FREC round at Paul Ricard. The baking weather ensured teams’ inflatable pools got plenty of use as drivers tried to cool down between hot battles on track

During the previous two seasons, Isack Hadjar was the only Formula Regional European Championship newcomer to win in their rookie season, and you had to go back to 2020 to find someone with no category experience winning as a FREC rookie.

Off the back of that, it was expected that third-year driver Kas Haverkort and series sophomore Tim Tramnitz would set the pace in 2023. But as the paddock headed into the summer break, it was FREC rookies Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Martinius Stenshorne who had the most to smile about. Formula Scout got the thoughts of the main protagonists before the beach beckoned.

Having started this year with a full and title-winning campaign in FRegional Middle East after steppig up from Formula 4, Antonelli is not included in FREC’s rookie classification. He acknowledges that while FRME undoubtedly helped him with adapting, the differences to FREC are still noticeable.

“I think FRME helped a bit the rookies to make experience and to learn a bit more the car, even though, I have to say, it was quite a lot different when I came back to Europe,” he said, pointing out the different engine and tyres used by the two series.

After suffering a tough start to life in FREC at Imola, and then being robbed of a potential win by further technical issues at the Hungaroring, victories in each of the last three rounds has now propelled him into the championship lead.

“Of course, it’s a great feeling [to lead],” he told Formula Scout after winning the last race at Paul Ricard. “It’s really important for me and it’s going to be hard because our opponents are really strong but it’s going to be an interesting end to the season.”

The foundations for victory were laid with a sensational pole lap, as unusually the first qualifying group on track was faster.

FREC’s outright rookie winners

2019 Enzo Fittipaldi (2 wins), Olli Caldwell (1 win)
2020 Gianluca Petecof (4 wins), Arthurc Leclerc (6 wins)
2023 Alessandro Giusti (1 win)

FREC’s rookie winners with FRegional experience

2020 Oliver Rasmussen (6 wins), Patrik Pasma (4 wins)
2021 Isack Hadjar (2 wins)
2023 Andrea Kimi Antonelli (3 wins), Martinius Stenshorne (4 wins), Rafael Camara (1 win)

Most wins in FREC’s rookie classification

14 Frederik Vesti   10 Stenshorne
8 Leclerc & Hadjar   7 Petecof & Rasmussen   6 Gabriele Mini   5 Sebastian Montoya
4 David Schumacher & Tim Tramnitz   3 Fittipaldi, Gabriel Bortoleto & Joshua Dufek

Antonelli himself felt he could have gone faster still: “It was not amazing because I did a few mistakes so it could have been better, but it was good enough for pole and I’m really happy for that.”

Paul Ricard followed the recent pattern where he and Prema have got stronger as the weekend progresses, with each of his three wins coming in the Sunday race.

“As we did in Mugello, where we also started a bit off, we worked really hard, and we improved the car a lot,” Antonelli explained.

“Yesterday, we were really struggling. In practice we had really struggled to find the balance and then we weren’t able to try the new tyres, so we really went into quali just praying, without really knowing how the car would behave.”

Expectations were inevitably high as the Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 junior stepped into 2022’s double championship-winning car, but the season didn’t get off to the anticipated start.

“It was a bit tough in the beginning, I’m not gonna lie. We had a few mechanical issues which didn’t really help.”

“In Imola it was quite frustrating because we had issues all weekend from race one, then on Sunday we didn’t even drive [at speed], we had multiple mechanical issues. Then in Hungary we had another one – we found out the problem and now it’s all good. It was always an electronic problem but different ones,” he explains.

“Every race I try to improve on driving because I have to say in the first few races I didn’t really feel comfortable with the car. I’m trying to adapt as well as I can in every track and I think we’re doing quite well,” he added with some understatement.

Prema and Antonelli are definitely not underestimating the strength of their competition.

Photo: Diederik van der Laan / Dutch Photo Agency

“Other teams made a big step looking at last year and also they have really strong line-ups. We’re strong for sure because also today was proof the other teams are strong as well. They made a step so it’s going to be tight but we’re doing a good job and we’ll see what we can do. Martinius is really strong this year; he feels well with the car and he’s been really fast.”

Despite losing the championship lead to Antonelli in France, Stenshorne has undoubtedly been the revelation of the season’s first half. He has four wins so far, having stepped up to FRegional after a difficult 2022 spent in several F4 series. He mustered one podium in the United Arab Emirates and two in Italy, but did at least establish himself as Van Amersfoort Racing’s leader driver in the Italian series.  Rather than spend a second year in F4 he took the decision to step up.

With VAR having already filled its three FREC seats for 2023, Stenshorne, ever-present father Martin and his management team at Nicolas Todt’s All Road Management firm negotiated a berth at R-ace GP, in hindsight an inspired decision.

The partnership began with three rounds in FRME, enough for Stenshorne to retain rookie status for FREC, and he scored four times to come 18th in the standings. His form in Europe was an immediate improvement, as he won on debut at Imola.

“So far, this season is much more than we expected but we’ll take it,” Stenshorne said modestly. “We’ll try to do the rest of the season like this as well.”

The Imola win was followed by finishing seventh and 12th in the two races at Barcelona, but he bounched back with victory at the Hungaroring to reclaim the points lead, and won again the next day before taking a podium at Spa-Francorchamps, another win and a third place at Mugello, then a third and a fourth at Paul Ricard.

He and team-mate Tramnitz have been evenly matched and “the teamwork has been really good”, says Stenshorne. “Tim as a team-mate is really fast, which helps to push me to go faster as well, which is always good.”

Photo: Diederick van der Laan / Dutch Photo Agency

Unsurprisingly, the highlight of the year so far was at the Hungaroring: “A double win, you can’t get much better than that.”

Although he had a bad weekend at Barcelona, R-ace still scored big as Tramnitz won both races.

“I struggled a bit in Barcelona with some pace,” Stenshorne admits, but he was also unlucky to be caught out by red flags which “ruined one of my qualifyings”. In the one that wasn’t ruined he still qualified outside the top 10, but everywhere else “the speed has been good”.

One of Stenshorne’s skills this season has been the knack of pulling out a quick lap in the dying seconds of qualifying. Often, he has been outside the top five in the closing minutes and looking at a tough race before banging in a rapid time to jump to the top of his group.

Stenshorne sits six points behind Antonelli in the title fight, and in the rookie classification has a 139-point gap to Paul Ricard race one winner Alessandro Giusti down in 11th in the standings. The rookie title could be won in the next round.

“Both,” he shoots back immediately when asked whether he is focusing on wins or championship points. “I need to try to not take too many risks but still we will always try to win if it’s possible,” he says. “It’s a bit early to look at the championship so we are trying to go race-by-race and trying to maximise what we have always.”

Stenshorne and his father were spotted in the FIA Formula 3 paddock at Spa a week into their summer break, and the smiling duo said to Formula Scout they were “just looking around” as they sheltered from the rain under Campos Racing’s awning.

R-ace boss Thibaut de Merindol is understandably more than satisfied with the performance of his team and drivers in FREC, and is enjoying having two drivers fighting for wins.

“Obviously, it feels pretty good to be in such a fight with Antonelli and Prema for the championship. We are really happy to see both Tim and Martinius in this fight. It brings a lot of positive energy to everyone in the team so we don’t expect less than it will be tight at the end of the season.”

Tramnitz may be 35 points behind Stenshorne, but is 48 points clear of fourth in the standings. De Merindol knows “that Tim has the performance to be really as fast as” the top two. “He lost 15 points in Imola and something like 10 points in Hungary. Pace-wise he is really there so he can come back, I am sure.”

After taking the teams’ title in 2021, R-ace struggled to match the pace in the early part of 2022 as they got to grips with FREC’s new softer tyres. But “since mid-season last year we made a huge improvement and I think we are on the same path [now]”. R-ace leads the 2023 standing by 24 points over Prema, with six wins to their four.

“The teams’ [championship] is still very tight and it can go even faster with three cars, so we don’t have any break in the team ranking to Prema,” said de Merindol, but admitted his team is relaxed.

“It’s a positive mid-season break. We all get re-energised with the summer break and come back passionate at the Red Bull Ring.”

After spending some time with his family sailing off Corsica (“no engine, no noise, no speed”), de Merindol explained that R-ace will soon be back at a track. “We have a few starts during the summer to test some drivers for next year. It’s an important period for us to prepare next year but we’ll do our best as usual.”

Antonelli has delivered almost 60% of Prema’s points, but team-mate Rafael Camara has contributed a win and two other podiums. He took six podiums to come third in the FRME points as a rookie with the Prema-supported Mumbai Falcons team, but there have been “some ups and downs” in FREC since – despite quickly getting to grips with the differences in the car – and he sits fifth in the standings.

Photo: Sebastiaan Roozendaal / DPPA

“Sometimes we are missing a bit. You need to be really focused on the quali because otherwise it’s a bit difficult to gain the positions back in the race, because the category itself is a bit difficult to pass.”

Nevertheless, the quietly-spoken Ferrari junior believes, “we were always doing some good progress, even if we were losing; we always had something to take from the weekend”.

While he admits that “we still struggle” to become a title threat, “when everything is good, I think we are fighting for the win, so we should just keep calm and for sure we can do some good results before the end of the season”.

He and the team “are pretty confident”, and aside from heading back to his home in Brazil, Camara wants to use the summer break “to reset and to get back to where we want to be, at the top”.

With four rounds remaining, Antonelli is optimistic about the circuits ahead. “Hopefully we can keep the good mood. I personally really like Hockenheim and Zandvoort so hopefully I can have a good time there and even Monza and Red Bull Ring were nice to me last year,” he says.

“Hopefully we can keep going like this. It’s gonna be tough because the competitors are really strong but I think we’re on a good way.”

Hockenheim will mark FREC’s first visit to Germany, but as de Merindol explains, “we know it from [Formula Renault] Eurocup – we’ve been there with this car but with Hankook tyres”. All three of the title contenders have circuit experience from ADAC F4 too.

The post Antonelli and Stenshorne heat up their FREC battle before summer break appeared first on Formula Scout.

Only eight years old, R-ace GP has already fielded the likes of Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon on their way up the single-seater ladder. It’s a team synonymous with Formula Renault, and it’s focus on that category rather than diversifying means it has flown slightly under the radar. Despite winning the Eurocup and Northern European Cup for the last two years, that is.

It was launched in 2011 by?Thibaut de Merindol and Cyril Comte, who inhabit the roles of team principal and technical director, ex-employees of the recently defunct Formula Renault 3.5 team SG Formula. De Merindol picks up the story from that point.

“From 2003 to ’10, we?worked together as engineers for SG Formula.?We were doing Formula Renault Eurocup, we did two years FR3.5, and we did two years Formula 3 Euro Series, 2008 and ?09,” he recounts to Formula Scout.

“I became technical director of SG Formula and Cyril was working with me as an engineer on different programmes. Then SG Formula stopped at the beginning of 2010, so basically we had no job.”

De Merindol didn’t waste his time, becoming a race engineer at Tech 1 Racing for 2010 and adding some extra skills that would be useful for his future as a team boss.

“For us it was the opportunity to create the team, as I had a good relation with Cyril, together. To be honest we were already thinking before that the next step would be to start our own team.

“When SG stopped, we had the opportunity to buy all the materials. The trucks, the tool boxes, not the cars.”

Photo: Renault Sport / DPPI

An early backer of R-ace GP’s FR2.0 ambitions was Frederic Vasseur, the team principal of junior single-seater behemoth ART Grand Prix who’d later go on to run the Renault and Alfa Romeo Formula 1 teams.

“Before working with SG Formula I did all my engineering school internship, and my first year of race engineering, for ART, when it was racing in French Formula Renault. I did that from 2001-’03, and SG Formula started in 2004.

“I always kept a good relation with Fred Vasseur and Nicolas Todt, and when they saw that we decided to do our own team, we proposed to them to join the project, which they did.

“From the start they were in the boat with us. We entered the team under the name ?ART Junior Team? from 2013-’15.

“We split with ART when Fred Vasseur went to work for Renault F1, because it was a bit of confusion as he was also in charge of the Eurocup championship. It was a bit of a problem, as he was involved in our team. At that point we found it was the time for us to continue our route by our own wings, I would say.

“It was good opportunity as well at that time to say: ok, we bought the parts. Because ART was a shareholder in our team, so in 2015 or ?16 I think, we bought the shares back. ?But we are still working together on some areas. We use their simulator in Paris. They’ve supplied some engineers in our team for three, four years now.

“We are always having one engineer from them coming in our team. It?s good for them because I would say – we?re not preparing their engineers for the highest categories, but it?s a good technical partnership we have had since the start and kept even when we stopped the ART Junior Team [name].”

The ART link isn’t the only one that runs strongly through the team, as many of its members have studied at ESTACA in Paris, the same engineering college de Merindol and Comte attended.

“Most of our engineers come from the same engineering school that we did, and?I hope all my guys have a great success in motorsport. There are many routes in motorsport, you can decide to go to higher categories, go to F1 if you are a good engineer.

“Or you can decide to make your own team. It?s a totally different career perspective but there are many perspectives you can have. As soon as you are good enough, you have opportunities.”

Although the de Merindol-Comte combo was long established, it took a while for R-ace GP to prove itself in the Eurocup.

Its debut year in 2011 resulted in just two podiums and eighth place in the teams’ standings, with future sportscar star Norman Nato picking up both rostrum appearances and 11th in the drivers’ classification. The sophomore season, the last with the tricky Barazi-Epsilon car, was an improvement but it was in no place to fight for victories. In FR NEC however, it was able to take a first triumph with McLaren junior Nyck de Vries.

“We won the Eurocup rookie title with Nyck de Vries in 2012. And?thanks to that we got Esteban Ocon the year after, because Nyck went to Koiranen for his second year as he believed we weren’t ready enough for him to fight for the title. He was fifth again with Koiranen in 2013.

Photo: Renault Sport / DPPI

“Esteban is for me one of the most talented drivers we had. His ability to adapt to track conditions, to understand very quickly the situation and to be very clever, was quite impressive. [Pierre] Gasly won that year with Tech 1, and [Oliver] Rowland was second [ahead of Ocon]. I think Esteban should have fought more for the title, but as a team it was only our third season and I think we were not as ready as we are now.”

De Merindol puts R-ace GP’s early success down partly to the “good drivers” it had, and that it was exposed when it did not possess a ‘superstar’ talent.

“I think we did a proper job but not as good as what we are able to do now. We had two very difficult seasons in 2014 and ?15. From that point, we reorganised many things from 2015, because we realised we were not good enough and had to change things in all the aspects of our job: organisation, logistics, engineering, everything.

“From that point we started to improve, and the first really positive season was 2016. Then we were fighting for the Eurocup in 2017, ’18 and I hope 2019.”

One of the key changes in approach de Merindol cites is that Comte and himself, who were used to considerable success with SG Formula, only had an “engineering view” when initially running their team.

Photo: Renault Sport / DPPI

“We had to take a big step back to understand that it?s not only about engineering and set-up,” de Merindol explains.

“That there is many other areas you need to set up properly to make the team work properly. This took us a bit of a while. And that?s what we needed to do after 2013, when we realised that R-ace GP was not enough to have the success we used to have, which was fighting for titles. That was the big wake-up call.”

In 2016 the team ran Josef Kaufmann Racing’s Lando Norris close in the Eurocup and NEC with Max Defourny, which included the famous on-track battle the duo had at the Red Bull Ring.

“It was frustrating but good memories. That was the first year where every time we were coming on track we knew we would be fighting for pole positions and maybe wins, against very good competitors that were JKR and Norris. So we knew we were on a good way for the team, and that finally we were fighting for the title.

“This was something new for us, so that?s a very good feeling. And that?s something, as I said before, we used to know but we lost at the start of R-ace GP. It was good to feel that we’re finally back in business the way we want. But very frustrated because at the end Norris won.

“The Red Bull Ring battle is a good summary of 2016. We were as fast, even faster at that point than Norris, but at the end we didn?t have all the little details compared to JKR, as for us it was our first year at that ?level? – getting the results [we wanted].

“We had the potential, we had the speed, we had all that – but were missing a little bit. From 2017 we were on that level.”

Photo: Renault Sport / DPPI

In 2017, R-ace GP ran Will Palmer and Robert Shwazrtman to second and third in the Eurocup standings, ensuring it won the teams’ title, a feat it repeated in NEC after Michael Benyahia clinched the drivers’ championship too. The teams’ title double happened again last year, with Max Fewtrell picking up R-ace GP’s first Eurocup crown.

Despite using identical equipment and mostly similar driving line-ups, the Eurocup and NEC squads were in fact manned by completely separate units of staff, with de Merindol as the only crossover member. This ensured there was no priority in one championship over the other.

Data sharing helped both teams improve, but it’s a setup that works differently now as NEC’s demise means the second squad now work on a ADAC Formula 4 campaign. In addition, the Eurocup’s brand new car for 2019 means there is little that applies to both championships.

De Merindol’s highlight of R-ace GP’s history is the ‘mistake-free’ 2019 title, led by a driver who even when down in the standings “never lost his way”.

Having “started from zero” with the brand new Eurocup car, R-ace GP has done an impressive job to lead the teams’ standings.

“When you believe you have a little advantage, or you understood quite well the tyres or the car, you want to keep it because it?s like a security. But it?s not challenging, so I totally accept that at one point you need to change the car. And if we are good, if we deserve to be the best, we should be able to find a way with the new car.

“Yes it would be more comfortable to stay with the old car and have the benefit of our experience, but it?s not the way we see our job. We like challenge.”

Photo: Renault Sport / DPPI

The post The face behind R-ace GP: Formula Renault’s latest title winner appeared first on Formula Scout.