The correlation between pace and results was missing once again with the Dallara F2 2024 for some this year, but the bigger story was whether anyone in the field really had the potential to beat Leonardo Fornaroli

When Formula Scout came to review the 2024 Formula 2 season, the first using a new car, the easiest way to sum up the relationship between pace and points was “How talent shone through in an F2 season of statistical quirks”.

The same applies to 2025, where the fastest driver in the field came 11th in the standings. And he knew he was fastest.

Invicta Racing was the team to beat with the Dallara F2 2024, and did the title double again as rookie Leonardo Fornaroli was crowned champion and Roman Stanek scored over 100 points too down in 10th in the table.

Over the 27-race season, Fornaroli amassed twice as many points as his team-mate and 36 more than anyone else. The same gap split second to fifth in the standings. A record-equalling 14 rounds led to 10 drivers scoring a century of points, a tally only matched in 2020 and beaten in 2022, but Fornaroli’s total was only the 17th highest haul in GP2/F2 history.

Halfway through the latest campaign, Formula Scout delved into the data and Stanek’s quote “in F2 qualifying and the race, they are two different sports” headlined the analysis due to the disparity between the two numerical threads.

And rather than start now with comparing Fornaroli to his rivals, we’ll look at Stanek’s season as the pace and results of a ‘weaker’ driver in a line-up is a good way of demonstrating how competitive their team and their lead driver is.

Invicta was fifth in the teams’ standings at the season’s halfway point, 37 points behind championship leaders Campos Racing, with Fornaroli and Stanek fourth and 11th in the points table. Across the first seven rounds, they were on average the third and ninth fastest drivers in the field, then 11th and 16th on race pace.

Absolute pace

Stanek scored three-and-a-half times as many points in the season’s second half, his tally actually beating what Fornaroli achieved in the first half of the season. At the halfway point, Stanek had seven feature race points while Fornaroli had 65.

In the second half of 2025, Stanek scored 65 feature race points and Fornaroli netted 81. That 16-point difference was smaller than the advantage title rivals Jak Crawford at DAMS (61), Richard Verschoor at MP Motorsport (18) and Alex Dunne at Rodin Motorsport (36) had, but larger than Luke Browning’s three-point outscoring of team-mate Dino Beganovic at Hitech GP.

Having a competitive team-mate was an advantage, since Invicta and Hitech’s duos all scored 65 or more points and the teams rose to first and second in the standings. Crawford, AIX Racing’s Joshua Duerksen and Prema’s Gabriele Mini were the only other drivers to exceed 37 points in the season’s second half, with 67, 62 and 41 respectively.

Invicta’s team principal James Robinson told Formula Scout about Stanek’s input in the team’s competitiveness, which was key to Fornaroli’s title bid, saying “his technical understanding of the vehicle is really second-to-none”.

By the end of the year, after Stanek had taken two poles which were converted into second places and won the feature race at Spa-Francorchamps, and victories in three sprint races and one feature race had gone to Fornaroli, the pair were on average the second and fourth fastest drivers of 2025 on single-lap pace (with Fornaroli ahead) and eighth and 14th on race pace.

The improvement in results at Invicta, making it the team to beat, were backed up by quotes from the Silverstone sprint race which kicked off the second half of the campaign. Fornaroli claimed his first win, and Stanek joined him on the podium.

“We changed massively,” said Stanek. “Mainly the work is done outside of the race track, then you just come on the race and prepare it. We did a lot of work behind the scenes, from simulator to some mental health and how to drive a race car. I’ve been missing… not some information, but some little details that helped me in the races, especially.”

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

He added that “although it’s my third season in F2, every day you keep learning new and new stuff” and that the team had “improved a lot”.

Fornaroli was less insightful about the team’s pace, with his favourite phrase over the year being “it means nothing”. What he meant was that strong results or the points lead, which he took in round nine at Spa, couldn’t be taken for granted.

He was analytical about individual races in conversation, primarily because that’s the info people asked for after each of his four wins, but after winning the Spa sprint race he did discuss his progress as a rookie.

“Now that I have more races in my back, as well as testing, I understood more about the tyres. At the start, it was not easy because compared to Formula 3 it’s quite different. But the biggest step forward I did [was] in Silverstone, so there I learned a lot and it was a very similar situation [to winning today].”

That first win, after becoming 2024 FIA F3 champion with no victories, was “a weight lifted” and a “confidence boost” that enabled Fornaroli to further raise his game.

Fornaroli and Stanek’s working relationship actually extended back to 2022, with both racing for Trident for three years but always in different championships, and they credited it frequently during the season for their collective strength as a line-up.

Crawford came second in F2 this year, and despite the continuity of racing for DAMS faced blind alleys on set-up and had to rely on individual brilliance to bring home big results. He scored 88 points in the season’s first half, and 87 in the second.

After winning the wet Silverstone feature race, a points-free Spa weekend followed. Then Crawford finished third in both races at the Hungaroring, but a points-free weekend at Monza followed. Then he won the Baku feature race from pole, but scored only one point at Losail.

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Crawford knew Silverstone would be a “a track that would suit our car”, and expanded on how circuit comparability impacted consistency.

“We find every weekend quite different, and always different challenges, of course. I mean it’s same for everyone, but we seemed to already last year with the team struggle a bit more with consistency. And this year it’s been a lot better, but it hasn’t been consistently at the front, it’s been kind of consistently in the top 10. I think we’re improving.”

At the Hungaroring he qualified third, rose from eighth to third in the sprint race then maintained his position behind the Invicta duo in the feature race. The third-year F2 driver called his best qualifying lap “one of the best laps I’ve done in F2”, despite it not delivering pole, and cited previous instances of post-practice set-up adjustments hampering his qualifying.

Invicta’s drivers were slowest in Monza practice and Crawford was ninth, behind team-mate Kush Maini. In qualifying, Browning took pole, Maini showed DAMS’ potential by pipping Stanek to second, Fornaroli was eighth and Crawford was in 11th with engine issues that left him way off the pace in the races too.

Since several of Crawford’s bad weekends occurred in the first of back-to-back rounds where he then bounced back, he said “I feel like we’ve done a great job to look past the bad, until we feel like we need to look back at it and make adjustments”. Whether that approach truly helped is unknown, but even if he had been consistent Crawford felt the title wasn’t likely.

“It’s hard to beat when the team [Invicta] and also Leo have done a great job. So anyways, even at our best, it would have been very difficult still. We just missed a little bit. Maybe Invicta were the most consistent team, especially when it came to qualifying. I feel like me, Richard and Luke, we were all a bit inconsistent. And it just comes down to a bit the car.

“Kind of [on] the new car that we’ve had since last year, it’s more tricky to get into the window. I feel like the tyres always have been very tricky to get in the correct window. So those two things, if you’re not getting it right every time, you pay the price.”

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Ahead of Monza, Verschoor sought improved pace by introducing a blander livery that weighed less in paint. According to F2’s own info, he was the tallest driver on the grid in 2025. Therefore his car spent many races far above the minimum weight.

He was 24 points clear at the top halfway through the season, sixth on absolute pace and second on race pace, and ended the year seventh and first on those two metrics. His performances earned him McLaren Formula 1 junior status alongside Fornaroli, and unlike the champion he has a confirmed racing programme for 2026 as he heads to the European Le Mans Series.

But having led the way on 114 points, he only scored 56 more after that despite eight successive points-scoring races. His sole podium was victory in the Losail sprint race. That result made him the highest-scoring driver in sprint races this year, but Fornaroli, Crawford and Browning were far ahead with their feature race tallies. While his single-lap pace only worsened slightly after the Red Bull Ring round in summer, where he claimed his third win, that proved costly while others improved.

He never qualified on pole, but having an average starting spot on Sundays of 6.86, with a median of fifth place since 19th in Imola was his only time outside of the top 10, still proved enough to bring in the points in the season’s first half. His average starting spot was 10.71 in the second half, where Silverstone and Losail were the only tracks where he was in the top 10.

There was some irony that at Monza his new livery did seem to help, as he was second fastest in qualifying before he had his fastest lap deleted for triggering a red flag period when he crashed out while in clean air.

To some degree, poor qualifying form meant more opporunities to rise up the order in races. But he actually proved better at that in the season’s first half, improving his position in nine out of 13 races. The Losail win was his eighth in F2, making him the joint fifth most successful driver in GP2/F2 history. It meant “not much” for a driver with over 125 starts.

Fornaroli won the title the next day, and the unravelling of Verschoor’s title attack appeared to be of his own making as team-mate Oliver Goethe was in the top 10 five out of seven times in the season’s second half and his average starting spot on Sundays was 9.14.

Qualifying

Goethe served three-place grid penalties in both Losail races for an impeding violation in qualifying, which he had topped. That meant “a huge amount” to Goethe, after working hard through the season to improve his qualifying, and Verschoor was 0.678s back in 10th. MP and Invicta were the only two teams to get both of their cars into the top 10, and while Goethe exited the weekend with no points he was fifth in both races of the Abu Dhabi season finale while Verschoor scored nothing.

“Yesterday I just didn’t do a good job. I also apologised to the team of course for that. My team-mate did a phenomenal job,” Verschoor said after his Losail win.

“He showed that he’s really quick and that the car is very good around here. And I think we showed it again today in the race. For sure the car is very competitive on this kind of track. Also next week, I know that we are good as well in Abu Dhabi. So it’s up to me to perform. Yesterday I could just feel that – I’m not someone that is driving at all in the break.

“I haven’t been in a race car for two months, and I think that’s just not really smart. Even though it’s very expensive to drive, it’s just not smart because I could feel the difficulty in putting the lap together.”

For a driver in his fifth F2 campaign, it was a very odd remark. After the big break before the Middle Eastern rounds in the previous three seasons, he had returned to action with a sprint race podium each time. His expectation of performing strongly at Yas Marina Circuit was based on a run of podiums there since 2022, including third place and fastest lap in last year’s feature race with the then-new Dallara F2 2024 car.

“I just didn’t have the right feeling with the car [at Losail]. Even though I could feel that there was a lot of potential, I struggled to put everything together, to nail every corner, and I only did five laps in free practice because my engine broke. I had to change engine after FP. So that was also not helping. It just didn’t click. Sometimes you have those kind of sessions, and it was definitely up to me.”

Photo: Red Bull Content Pool

Based on his own comments, even with a competitive car Verschoor was not getting in positions to remain a rival to Fornaroli.

He also didn’t want to take credit for Goethe’s improving over his first full F2 season, after his team-mate said “I try to learn as much as I can from” Verschoor. But he revealed they spent lots of time together away from the track, and was full of praise:

“I always said that he’s a super fast driver. He just couldn’t really show his potential straight away, but if you see the learning slope that he did, it’s just incredible. Being on pole yesterday I think was something no one was really expecting of him, but he pulled it off.”

That Invicta’s line-up entered 2025 with similar experience disparity, but the roles were reversed in terms of who was doing the late-season catching up to the lead driver’s performance level, further marks out Fornaroli as 2025’s only title-capable driver.

But what about Browning, Dunne, or even Campos’s Arvid Lindblad? Browning came fourth in the standings, but second was within reach, Dunne was Verschoor’s closest rival at the halfway mark and Lindblad’s performances earned him an F1 seat.

Lindblad can be ruled out, impressive as he was in his rookie season, as he was behind team-mate Pepe Marti in the standings when the Spanish sophomore ended his campaign two rounds early to step up to Formula E with Cupra Kiro.

“His decision to step away from F2 and commit fully to our FE project is a real statement of intent,” said the team’s chief operating officer Russell O’Hagan, and he was right. It was a cannily timed move, as Marti was a Red Bull junior like Lindblad but not getting any F1 test time or free practice call-ups like his team-mate was. If beating him wasn’t putting him contention for a 2026 Racing Bulls berth, and Ayumu Iwasa’s title-winning Super Formula season wasn’t enough to be picked over Lindblad either, then it was unlikely a spectacular 2026 in F2 or Red Bull’s usual dumping ground SF would for 2027.

Furthermore, Marti’s replacement Nikola Tsolov also outshone Lindblad. On his debut at Losail, a new track to him and without the pre-season preparations other rookies had, the FIA F3 graduate qualified seventh while Lindblad was 17th.

Race pace

Did less than three rounds. Race pace is calculated using drivers’ best rolling average of 10 consecutive green-flag laps

That put him fourth on the sprint race grid, and he took third from Van Amersfoort Racing’s Rafael Villagomez on lap one. They went wheel-to-wheel again on the final lap and Tsolov came off worse, dropping to 10th.

He was also set to finish one place higher than he started in the feature race, but a penalty for a unsafe release from his first ever pitstop put him back to seventh. Tsolov had “a busy couple of weeks trying to prepare myself physically” and faced many new elements under the lights in Qatar but “the only surprise was the call to move up” to F2 itself.

Lindblad redeemed himself by charging up to fourth, but that was his first top-five finish in a feature race since his win from pole in round six at Barcelona. When they headed to Abu Dhabi, Tsolov was faster again in qualifying. An impeding violation meant a three-place grid penalty in both races for Tsolov, but he rose from fifth to third in the sprint race and while there were only two circuits to take data from his average deficit to the benchmark on single-lap and race pace was sixth best in the field.

The fastest driver in the Yas Marina sprint race was Duerksen, who bookended 2025 with victories, claimed six podiums in the last eight races, led more laps total than all but Crawford and Fornaroli, was fifth on race pace for the year but 13th on single-lap pace and came ninth in the standings in a one-sided garage as team-mate Cian Shields propped up the field.

In contrast to Duerksen, Browning scored one point in the last five races and that cost him the championship runner-up spot. He led the points after round five in Monaco, had the best race pace in four races, and it would’ve taken only one race going differently for him to be 2025’s top scorer in feature races. Despite leading less than a feature race-worth of laps all season.

Laps led (excl. safety car periods)

1 Crawford 103   2 Fornaroli 90   3 Lindblad 61   4 Verschoor 60   5 Duerksen 54   6 Dunne 55   7 Beganovic 49   8 Marti 44   9 Maini 42   10 Browning 22   11 Stanek 16   12 Martins 12   13 Montoya 8   14 Miyata 5   15 Goethe 3   16 Mini 1

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Browning’s unpropitious end to the year began in the Baku feature race, where he had a slow start, lost time in a double stack pitstop, went off at a restart and pitted again to be a lap down. At Losail he spun in practice, qualified 18th and recovered to 10th in the feature race by cycling to the front (7% of his time leading in 2025) before pitting with three laps to go.

At Yas Marina he qualified 17th while struggling with a brake issue, finished the two races in 20th and 14th and got a pitlane speeding penalty.

Browning was fifth and fourth on absolute and race pace at the season’s halfway point, and improved to fourth in the latter but fell to eighth in the former with a minor worsening of his actual average gap to the benchmark pace on any given weekend.

He matched Fornaroli’s tally of nine podiums, while Crawford, Dunne and Duerksen all got eight, but only won once (from pole at Monza). The only other driver without multiple victories in the top in the standings was team-mate Beganovic.

Did a lack of winning form matter? Not according to Browning himself. “Honestly, I don’t mind [not winning],” was his take after a double podium in round three at Imola. He added at Barcelona “it doesn’t cross my mind at all to win any races” and “I couldn’t tell you who won the Barcelona feature race four years ago, but I can tell you who won the championship, so that’s the main goal for me”.

While being happily win-free doesn’t sound like a title-winning mentality, the Williams junior was conveying how relaxed he felt about his season at that point having met his personal targets — including improved consistency and showing race-winning pace. And he’d won twice en route to third in the 2024 FIA F3 Championship, behind Fornaroli and one-time winner Mini.

At the end of the season, after Browning had spent many weekends being asked by media about whether wins or consistency was more important for winning the title, Formula Scout circled back to his early-season comments. Since he had won a race, but not the title, what did he want his season to be remembered for within the paddock, and outside of it?

Points scored

Feature races			Sprint races
Pos	Driver	Points	Pos	Driver	Points
1	Fornaroli	144	1	Verschoor	62
2	Crawford	133	2	Fornaroli	61
3	Browning	131	=3	Dunne	44
4	Verschoor	108	=3	Lindblad	44
5	Dunne	102	=3	Marti	44
6	Beganovic	90	6	Crawford	38
7	Lindblad	88	7	Duerksen	34
8	Duerksen	73	8	Browning	31
9	Stanek	72	=9	Stanek	29
10	Marti	68	=9	Martins	29
11	Montoya	67	=11	Beganovic	26
12	Martins	64	=11	Mini	26

“Great question. What was really special about this year for me, which I think really shows who I was as a driver, is being the hero for the British fans at the home grand prix. That feature race, I came from outside the points, and I was lapping a second quicker than most people in the grid in the wet. And around my home circuit that I knew so well, I think it showed talent, because after all, all the cars are equal in the wet.

“That was probably one of the most standout things for me, and what I’d like to be remembered by is my wet-weather prowess. But I think equally the ability to execute and just optimise what I have in terms of the points. For the pace that we’ve had this year versus the points and situations that I’ve been in, I’ve almost optimised everything as a driver that I can.

“Not always do you have the luck to win the championship, you need pace and luck. And we didn’t have so much luck this year, especially with the safety car coming out when we were looking on for a podium last weekend [from 18th on the grid]. These things happen. Dominating in Monza was a good highlight, and not an easy one on a circuit that’s so easy to overtake. And just doing this in our first year. It takes guys years and years to perfect this championship, and still don’t achieve it. And although I’ve not managed to perfect the championship, we got bloody close at times, and I think I’m very proud of that.”

Saying he optimised everything doesn’t correlate with the season-end particularly. Beganovic finished ahead of him in 10 races, and six of those were in the last three rounds. He dominated the Baku sprint race to break his own victory duck and lead a Hitech one-two, and in the Losail feature race led a one-two again on fastest laps and race pace. But he finished ninth, and called it “one of my best races I’ve ever done”.

Hitech came second in the standings with its all-rookie line-up, and the 38-point gap to Invicta could’ve been far smaller or negated entirely. So maybe Browning was a title-calibre driver maximising his potential until the last two qualifying sessions.

Invicta, Hitech and Campos were the only teams to get double podiums, each doing so twice, while the champions were on the podium at 10 circuits, with Hitech, Campos and Rodin (which came eighth in the teams’ standings) collecting trophies from eight rounds. Like AIX, Rodin was reliant on one driver and its rookie Dunne scored all but five of its 155 points.

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

He was frank about what lacking a team-mate he could take data references from to improve his own car meant for his year.

“There was a relatively big gap between myself and the other car for most of the year,” Dunne told Formula Scout.

“There were a couple of times where there were things that I could maybe have a look at just to compare myself. But for the most part, it was very difficult to pick apart things to find for the majority part of the year. In fairness to Martinus [Stenshorne], in Qatar he jumped in pretty quickly and did a good job there. So I would say that was kind of the first weekend of the year where I had another reference to properly analyse and learn from, and spend a lot more time looking through the data to just see where I can improve.

“I think for the most part of the year, even without a strong reference, we’ve still done a good job kind of getting there, not by ourselves, but without having data to properly compare to each weekend. We’ve always managed to still reach a very high level.”

Dunne was the second fastest driver at the season’s halfway point, and sixth on race pace. He was surpassed by Fornaroli on absolute pace after that, and to ninth on race pace despite his average gap to the pace-setters only increasing marginally. That’s impressive given the lack of a strong team-mate meant he couldn’t enjoy the learning curve Fornaroli had.

As a McLaren junior Dunne could lean on their support to improve himself, while Browning felt he developed massively under Williams this year. Dunne got two F1 practice call-ups too, both on F2 weekends so requiring in-event adaptation, then he left McLaren in October to reportedly pursue a seat with an F1 rival. Dunne didn’t comment on this when asked by Formula Scout.

There’s one driver who notably has not been named in this review of the 2025 F2 title fight, because he didn’t feature in it.

Victor Martins was on average the fastest driver in qualifying this year, without a doubt, as he was never off the pace. But the reasons he came 11th in the standings in his third campaign with ART Grand Prix will require analysing on their own.

The post Could anyone have beaten Fornaroli to the 2025 F2 title? appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Matt Fraver

Dennis Hauger is headed to IndyCar in 2026 after instant adaptation to the challenges of Indy Nxt this year

While rookie champions aren’t uncommon in IndyCar’s primary feeder series, they usually arrive in Indy Nxt with circuit knowledge and oval racing experience from the steps below on the road to Indy.

The last exceptions prior to 2025 were Jean-Karl Vernay and Josef Newgarden, who stepped up from the Formula 3 Euro Series and the Formula 1-supporting GP3 (now known as the FIA F3 Championship) respectively in 2010 and ’11.

Dennis Hauger was not making a step up when he arrived in Indy Nxt this year, since he had three Formula 2 seasons under his belt, but there was still a lot to learn. Yet F2, rather than Indy Nxt, experience may have been what rivals rued lacking.

“For sure coming over from F2, just having the experience with tyre degradation, that sort of stuff especially, has helped me,” said Hauger after winning the first two races of 2025 on the streets of St. Petersburg and at Barber Motorsports Park.

“But I’m still coming over here [and] it’s a new car, it’s a new tyre compound, new tracks. It’s all new. So definitely I think it helped me get up to speed quickly, but at the end of the day it’s also new for me. So I have to prepare as much as I can for the weekends and do the job to make sure I’m there. But really happy, it feels natural with the Indy Nxt car and it just clicks well so far, so I’m really happy we’re able to maximise that.”

Hauger said his Barber victory was “definitely a confidence boost and a good way to step into an intense season ahead”. Qualifying had taken place on a drying track so the conditions were changing constantly, and Hauger topped his group by 0.5964 seconds. In the race he was dominant, quickly opening up gaps after two pace car interruptions and winning by 11s.

As if to rub in his pace advantage in clean air, Hauger set the fastest lap by 0.4673s with two laps to go. While he lapped in the 1m12s, only three other drivers went sub-1m14s and his lead grew by 0.9437s on that lap alone. Hauger also got his mistakes out of the way long before the race.

Rolling race pace average

Pos.	Driver	Pace	Pos.	Driver	Pace
1	Hauger	100.116%	13	Missig	101.257%
2	Collet	100.353%	14	Taylor	101.331%
3	Rowe	100.445%	15	Koolen	101.390%
4	Hughes	100.555%	16	Murray	101.527%
5	d’Orlando	100.672%	17	Aron	101.533%
6	de Alba	100.676%	18	Smith	101.601%
7	Pierson	100.749%	19	Roe	101.658%
8	Hedge	100.759%	20	Escotto	101.659%
9	Sceats	100.956%	21	Allaer	101.719%
10	Johnson	101.005%	22	Miller	101.865%
11	Papasavvas	101.017%	23	Hamilton	102.519%
12	Correa	101.100%	24	Deegan	103.414%

Iowa’s track record was also smashed, but during the in-season test there, so Indy Nxt chose to reduce engine power for its race event. Andretti’s Salvador de Alba set the practice pace by 0.01s, with Hauger 0.05s back in third, then rain led to qualifying being cancelled and Hauger being handed another pole due to being points leader. He proved to be the fastest driver anyway, since his fastest lap in the race beat de Alba’s practice benchmark.

He did not win however, since Abel Motorsports with Force Indy’s Myles Rowe passed him less than five minutes from the end to claim a landmark victory. Rowe also had the best race pace, marginally quicker than Hauger’s.

The season ended with two oval races, and Hauger was crowned in the first at the Milwaukee Mile. He topped practice by just 0.0265s, then set the pace in qualifying by a huge margin and with a different approach to his main rival for pole.

De Alba was the driver to beat, and Hauger was over 1mph slower than him on his first lap but over 4mph faster on his second to take pole by 0.9mph (0.2839s). The fastest lap of the weekend was de Alba’s first one in qualifying, and he was also quickest on race pace as he overtook Hauger on the opening lap and went on to take his maiden win. He had finished third at Iowa, repeating his 2024 podium, and Milwaukee proved to be his strongest track for the second year in a row.

Like Hughes’ win at Gateway, it was confidence with using the high line that set up de Alba for success, and he arrived at Milwaukee with a car where “just tuning” was needed to be quickest. Across the season’s four ovals, Andretti’s trio were the fastest drivers and de Alba actually was on average closer to the absolute pace over a lap than Hauger was. Which wasn’t surprising, given he had experience of them.

Hauger was stronger than anyone else in 2025 for race pace on ovals, despite no wins, courtesy of consistently being competitive. Rowe was the top scorer on ovals with 170 points, followed by de Alba on 164 and Hauger on 151. Hughes and Collet trailed on 130 and 128. On all other circuits, Hauger scored 448 points, with Collet and Hughes on 339 and 336. HMD’s Josh Pierson, who came sixth in the standings with only one weekend where he was on the podium, was next best on 290.

Rolling race pace (Ovals)

Pos.	Driver	Pace	Pos.	Driver	Pace
1	Hauger	100.168%	12	Aron	101.492%
2	Collet	100.249%	13	Murray	101.532%
3	Rowe	100.251%	14	Correa	101.535%
4	de Alba	100.314%	15	Taylor	101.678%
5	d’Orlando	100.590%	16	Allaer	101.709%
6	Hedge	100.663%	17	Smith	102.308%
7	Hughes	100.743%	18	Escotto	102.364%
8	Pierson	100.783%	19	Hamilton	102.519%
9	Koolen	101.087%	20	Deegan	102.557%
10	Missig	101.245%	21	Miller	103.344%
11	Roe	101.292%	Driver did less than three oval rounds

The pressure was off for the finale at Nashville Superspeedway, the only superspeedway on the calendar, so Hauger went in “just trying to enjoy the weekend, learn as much as I could” about the high-speed layout. He was fifth in practice (0.0778s off top spot), qualified third as de Alba broke his pole position duck, and finished his sole Indy Nxt season with a third place.

“I think I’m good at adapting, but more than anything [it’s] just the preparation work we’ve done,” Hauger said about rapidly getting onto the pace at almost every circuit.

“The week before and the days before, working hard to be as prepared as possible has been a bigger part of it. I think that’s what made us be a step ahead on some tracks, especially.”

As for adapting to ovals specifically, he added: “In the pre-season watching ovals and just seeing how it looks, you never know really what to expect before you get on track. And I remember the first time I went out in Nashville, in the first test day it was just like ‘woah, this feels like I feel a superhero driving in a circle’.

“It can be the coolest thing and the craziest thing and most scary thing as well. So it’s been a really cool part of the year, and to go to so many different types of tracks has been a really cool part of this championship for me. Great learning curve in something completely new.”

There were two low points for Hauger during the season. The first followed his Barber win, during the IMS double-header. He qualified second for race one, had contact into the opening corner but stopped it from being a race-ending clash by taking to the escape road. It sent him down to 19th, and he recovered to eighth.

He had also missed out on pole for race two the next day, but after passing team-mate Lochie Hughes he controlled the race from the front. That was down to correctly predicting the track’s evolution between races, in his first double-header event.

Photo: Penske Entertainment

“Yesterday was a tough day. We didn’t have the best pace out there to be honest, but I think we sorted some things out for today and were able to fix the mistakes we did and get on with it,” Hauger said after victory.

He called it a “good bounceback” showing that mindset-wise “we’re not going to be put down so easily” by a bad day, which began on “the balance side” but ultimately only cost him one place in qualifying. And then gave him knowledge of being in the pack.

The next low point was at Laguna Seca, which followed Iowa on the schedule and was before Portland where his sixth win was claimed. Hauger topped free practice one, but in FP2 only did one lap before going off at turn six and into the barriers. It ended his day, but he bounced back in qualifying to be under 0.071s off poleman Collet on race one and two’s grids.

Collet held off Hauger by 0.2s to win race one, then won again in race two as Hauger was eliminated in a multi-car crash.

Overall, Hauger found his Indy Nxt switch “felt really fresh”, making him “super motivated and positive and energised the whole year” regardless of the results. After becoming champion, he reflected on how valuable his F2 experience proved.

“With F2 to Indy Nxt, you can say whatever you want, but those two cars are completely different. The weight is over 100kg or 200kg different. The horsepower is a bit different, and the driving style is completely different. I did feel really confident though in the Indy Nxt car straight away, which was nice, because it felt like a natural driving style for me.”

As for the two generations of F2 machinery he raced? “[It] didn’t feel as natural for me. It’s been going pretty natural for me and with these tyres, it’s been pretty cool. You can push them hard throughout the race with the Firestone tyres [compared to F2’s Pirellis]. There’s just been so many different factors in this series, which makes [it] really interesting and fun.”

Hauger secured his IndyCar promotion with Dale Coyne Racing, which is entering a technical alliance with Andretti. His step up has been in part funded by the $850,000 prize for winning the Indy Nxt title. That will be spent on a rookie oval test, the Indianapolis 500 open test and rookie orientation programme, his entry into the Indy 500 and one other race in 2026.

The post How dominant was Indy Nxt’s 2025 champion Dennis Hauger? appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photos: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Drivers in F3 often rue weekends not coming together, but this year the results very much reflected the pace

There were no doubts that Trident’s Rafael Camara was the driver to beat in the 2025 FIA Formula 3 Championship, and he claimed five poles out of 10. But he was also one of the eight drivers to line up in 30th and last place for a feature race.

Only two drivers scored half as many points as Camara racked up in feature races, but in sprint races he was outscored by 14 of his rivals. He had a 26-point lead after four races, but only nine races later did he grow that advantage to 27 points. His lead grew by another point in the following round, then he added 20 to it at the Hungaroring and wrapped up the title a round early.

So was it a dominant year? Or did the first two rounds outside of Europe make the difference before the more familiar tracks for the field made it a more competitive contest?

Let’s start with the detail with the biggest impact on drivers and teams’ competitivity this year: the new Dallara F3 2025 car.

Pre-season testing took place at Barcelona, and in winter coats. The consensus was the cool conditions made the test useful for teams but no so much for drivers, particularly with wet weather during some running, and there was huge variance in paddock responses regarding how similar or different the car was to its lighter predecessor.

Some drivers stepped up from series with tyres with very different characteristics to the Pirellis used in F3, so managing degradation was a crucial new skill they needed to learn that Barcelona in February didn’t offer.

The track time was still incredibly useful for teams, who now had data to correlate their simulator models to the real car. Trident’s Noah Stromsted said after two rounds his team’s model was “very accurate” and why “we always start in quite a high level” on race weekends. Camara topped practice and qualifying at each of the first three rounds.

Single-lap pace

Pos	Driver	Team	Pace	Pos	Driver	Team	Pace
1	Rafael Camara	Trident	100.214%	20	Santiago Ramos	VAR	100.846%
2	Nikola Tsolov	Campos	100.286%	21	Brando Badoer	Prema	100.874%
3	Mari Boya	Campos	100.475%	22	Louis Sharp	Rodin	100.932%
4	Brad Benavides	AIX	100.509%	23	Joshua Dufek	Hitech	100.965%
5	Noah Stromsted	Trident	100.537%	24	James Wharton	ART GP	101.038%
6	Martinius Stenshorne	Hitech	100.564%	25	Christian Ho	DAMS	101.044%
7	Tim Tramnitz	MP	100.569%	26	Ivan Domingues	VAR	101.047%
8	Freddie Slater	AIX/Hitech	100.591%	27	Jose Garfias	AIX	101.076%
9	Alessandro Giusti	MP	100.610%	28	Matias Zagazeta	DAMS	101.141%
10	Ugo Ugochukwu	Prema	100.624%	29	Nikita Bedrin	AIX	101.181%
11	Roman Bilinski	Rodin	100.638%	30	Jesse Carrasquedo Jr	Hitech	101.189%
12	Callum Voisin	Rodin	100.648%	31	Fernando Barrichello	AIX	101.222%
13	Noel Leon	Prema	100.649%	32	Gerrard Xie	Hitech	101.291%
14	Charlie Wurz	Trident	100.674%	33	Niko Lacorte	DAMS	101.348%
15	Theophile Nael	VAR	100.679%	34	James Hedley	AIX/VAR	101.385%
16	Tuukka Taponen	ART GP	100.737%	35	Nikita Johnson	DAMS/Hitech	101.437%
17	Bruno del Pino	MP	100.737%	36	Javier Sagrera	AIX	101.575%
18	Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak	Campos	100.778%	37	Nicola Marinangeli	AIX	102.141%
19	Laurens van Hoepen	ART GP	100.818%	38

Driver did less than three rounds. No average when only one event attended

Super simulator usage enabling Trident’s drivers to start 2025 with more confidence and pace was grounded further when Van Amersfoort Racing’s Santiago Ramos said his pre-season preparations had been tougher than expected as he had been used to Trident’s simulator from racing for them in 2024.

“With the new car, where there was a big question mark for everyone on where are you going to start,” reflected Camara, one of the field’s rookies. “Let’s say that we got the right information [from testing] then we knew already the direction to go.”

During the season opener in Melbourne, a very different track to Barcelona, Ramos told Formula Scout that the difference in approach and feeling to the Dallara F3 2019 wasn’t when driving at pace — or managing it — but rather with “warm-up procedures”. Given how much track temperature influences that, it meant lots of learning waited for the first two rounds.

Drivers without the understanding of where those procedures had to be approached differently started the season with big question marks as to why qualifying push laps they felt happy with in the moment put them down the order, and they all made the breakthrough at different points.

Trident had it nailed from the off, while Ramos went from lining up last in round two to qualifying second in round three.

Camara’s pace advantage in Melbourne was calculated from practice, where laptimes were faster than in qualifying. He told Formula Scout next time out at Bahrain that “qualifying is the most important” session to maximise, and after taking the title spoke about one of FIA F3’s sporting regulations increasing the significance of the skills and understanding he started with.

“Some races we had a different [tyre] compound from free practice to quali. That you don’t even know what is the grip [for qualifying]. And in understanding where is the limits and be fast straight away, I think this was a strong point on my side because every time on the first runs, we were already with a good pace.”

Rafael Camara

His team-mate Charlie Wurz qualified third at Bahrain, and he deemed pre-season simulator work “the most important part” of 2025 as he pointed out Trident’s drivers had already been learning from each other when in it. Formula Regional graduate Camara echoed that, and comments on feeling the collective value of having strong team-mates.

Bahrain’s track surface was “super dirty, super hot” according to AIX Racing’s Freddie Slater, and the safest approach every team could take was to use the lowest tyre pressures possible to delay the onset of degradation and overheating.

But Campos Racing, which was yet to find the warm-up breakthrough and been far from contending for pole, found those issues occurred rapidly anyway despite an in-season test at the track providing further learning time.

“From lap two, I was already struggling with the rears, so that I knew that it was going to be a long race,” said its sprint race winner Nikola Tsolov, who had qualified eighth and benefited from a reversed grid for that race result.

“I tried to save them as much as possible. Then the degradation went forwards. I was struggling with fronts at some point on braking, and it was just a mess, a little bit of deg everywhere, which made life difficult.”

Only slightly ahead in qualifying, but finishing in the top four of both Bahrain races was Tuukka Taponen and he was proud that his team ART Grand Prix made a “good step up from Melbourne” where it went points-free and Taponen qualified 24th.

The one-month gap before round three at Imola left plenty of time for data analysis, but also to have a break as the Monaco and Barcelona rounds were in the weekends immediately following Imola.

Rodin Motorsport’s Callum Voisin called the calendar’s triple-header “very mentally challenging by the end”, but there was not a performance drop-off trend in the paddock across the three events since teams mostly became more competitive.

Qualifying

Driver	Mean start pos.	Median start pos.	Standard dev. of start pos.
Camara	5.8	1.5	8.67
Tsolov	7.1	6.0	6.47
Stromsted	9.5	9.5	5.52
Ugochukwu	10.4	7.5	7.98
Benavides	10.8	13.5	7.69
Bilinski	10.8	10.5	5.88
Wurz	10.8	8.0	7.17
Tramnitz	10.9	12.0	4.13
Slater	11.0	11.0	1.00
Stenshorne	11.4	10.5	4.22
Giusti	11.7	11.5	3.69
Boya	12.3	14.5	6.83
Taponen	12.9	9.0	8.47
Leon	13.1	13.5	6.76
Inthraphuvasak	13.2	12.0	7.57
Voisin	14.2	17.0	9.02
Nael	14.9	20.0	8.08
van Hoepen	15.0	17.0	6.39
Dufek	15.0	14.5	2.74
Ramos	16.0	16.0	8.68
Badoer	17.1	15.5	6.32
Sagrera	17.5	17.5	2.50
del Pino	18.0	21.0	8.99
Wharton	18.6	20.0	5.06
Sharp	18.7	19.5	6.28
Ho	18.9	21.5	7.02
Domingues	20.3	21.5	6.02
Zagazeta	21.7	24.0	6.69
Xie	23.5	26.0	7.30
Carrasquedo	24.5	24.5	1.50
Lacorte	24.6	26.0	4.88
Hedley	24.6	26.0	6.09
Johnson	25.3	27.5	5.54
Marinangeli	28.4	28.5	1.11

green text signifies top 10 in metric, red text signifies bottom 10

Campos continued its qualifying struggles, although Tsolov and team-mate Mari Boya were the top two in Monaco and converted that into first and third in the feature race. At Imola, Tsolov had said “we’re only improving each time we go out on track, so we keep finding a lot of new things,” and felt his Monaco weekend went right from the start.

The strong Monaco results showed confidence with the car but also with the famed street circuit. Other drivers lacked that, were more heavily impacted by the tricky to navigate traffic and conceded performance through caution. Boya was frank that Campos was still “losing a bit” over a lap but “especially in the races, I would say we are the most competitive ones”.

With overtaking almost impossible, and with some drivers backing off during the races to create fresh air for themselves and go for fastest lap, it masked where teams were still trailing in single-lap or long-run pace.

“We thought Trident was unstoppable, especially in the beginning of the season. But they have weak points as well. We can tell the last two rounds they’ve been having their flaws,” Tsolov remarked at the time.

Ramos had successfully pressured Camara into overworking his tyres to win the Imola feature race, with Camara later being asked to let team-mate Stromsted past. In Monaco, Stromsted crashed in practice and Trident’s highest-placed driver on the feature race grid was Wurz in seventh. Camara lined up 11th after being penalised three places for not meeting the minimum delta time under red flag conditions.

But the points leader headed to Barcelona “quite, quite relaxed” and proceeded to top practice, qualifying and win the feature race yet again. Tsolov was 10th in practice, and not on course to do much better in qualifying until he made the needed procedural breakthrough late in the session. It was a moment his team-mates didn’t seem to benefit collectively from, unlike in other line-ups, and one where the driver led the way rather than Tsolov’s engineer who he previously had in Spanish Formula 4.

Nikola Tsolov

“Before the weekend, I thought we were going to be really strong, but then things changed and we haven’t been finding what we need until the last [tyre] set where we did. I did. I did something really different, so I’m glad it worked out.”

Tsolov jumped to second with his final lap, and team-mates Mari Boya and Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak were 15th and 16th. In rounds one to four, Tsolov’s average grid position for feature races was 8.5. In the next four it was 2.8, and Camara’s was 3.3.

A slow start consigned Tsolov to finishing eighth in the Barcelona feature race, and while he was on the sprint race podium his feedback was similar to Bahrain after using his “bad” set of tyres.

“It was quite difficult. We had a lot of oversteer, even following [other cars], and it was just a bit about surviving at some point. I was quite close to spinning off in a few corners, which is not usual.”

Despite Ramos having already delivered VAR a sprint race and feature race victory earlier in the year, Theophile Nael felt the team made a breakthrough at Barcelona. It was reflected by all three of VAR’s drivers qualifying in the top seven, Ivan Domingues leading home Ramos in the sprint race then Nael starring in the feature race by having his tyres well prepared for a safety car restart where he went around the outside of ART GP’s Laurens van Hoepen to take second place.

“We were missing something in Monaco and Imola. I think we found what’s happened and we did something really good on the car this weekend and hopefully we can manage to do it again in the second part of the season,” Nael said at the time.

Round six at the Red Bull Ring took place four weeks later, and this time it was Tsolov who topped practice, qualifying and dominated the feature race. After taking pole, he was quick to remind media why he was now qualifying at the front.

“In Barcelona we had an issue in [tyre] set one and two. I was not really fast, and then I did different things on the warm-up in set three which pumped me up to P2. So then we had time to analyse, which was good, and I think we found most of the things we need.”

Noah Stromsted

Brad Benavides was second fastest in Red Bull Ring qualifying – as AIX Racing showed its advantage at ‘power tracks’ which has been evident in Formula 2 and FIA F3 – 0.176 seconds off pole and 0.002s ahead of Stromsted. While most went for two runs, each featuring two sighting laps then two to three flying laps, Stromsted took a different approach after a mistake-filled first run.

“Instead of doing a cooldown lap and then going for a third push, I decided to box, and put on a new set of tyres to do one push lap. That was more about getting the feeling in the car [with] the track with the soft tyres. And it worked quite well. Then we went with everyone in the end, on our third set of tyres. And I left it for the last lap [to go for pole].”

ART GP struggled for pace at the Red Bull Ring, as would also occur at Spa-Francorchamps and to a lesser degree at Monza, but James Wharton was victorious in the sprint race as qualifying 12th put him on reversed-grid pole.

“I feel some teams have got it quite easy. They put the car down in Barcelona pre-season test and were fast. But we’ve had to work quite hard,” he told Formula Scout. “I spent nearly six days in a row on the sim in ART trying to prepare for these next couple of races.”

There was a twist in the title fight the next day, as Tsolov was disqualified from victory due to his front plank being below the minimum accepted thickness. The plank itself was damaged, but since Campos couldn’t prove to stewards that the damage induced the excessive wear, nor identify an event that triggered the damage, it couldn’t prevent Tsolov being removed from the race results. That meant Camara left the track 24 points clear rather than leading Tsolov by just one point.

Camara had showed suprerior race pace (measured over a consecutive run of 10 laps) while chasing Tsolov in the race, but that worked his tyres too hard and he then suffered a drop-off that consigned him to finishing sixth on-the-road. It contrasted heavily to Barcelona, since this time Tsolov was able to maintain a strong pace around the high-speed bends late into the 26-lap race. He lapped in the 1m24s in three of the last four laps, a pace only team-mate Boya in fourth could match on his starting set of tyres. Only eight drivers in total were able to go sub-1m25s even once after their rubber was 20 laps old.

Rolling race pace average

Pos	Driver	Pace	Pos	Driver	Pace	Pos	Driver	Pace
1	Camara	100.306%	12	Taponen	100.824%	23	Domingues	101.142%
2	Boya	100.432%	13	Leon	100.842%	24	Ho	101.176%
3	Tsolov	100.524%	14	Bilinski	100.902%	25	Johnson	101.253%
4	van Hoepen	100.577%	15	Benavides	100.970%	26	Zagazeta	101.317%
5	Stromsted	100.616%	16	Ugochukwu	100.977%	27	Carrasquedo	101.360%
6	Tramnitz	100.694%	17	Wharton	101.020%	28	Dufek	101.370%
7	Stenshorne	100.724%	18	Badoer	101.022%	29	Xie	101.374%
8	Inthraphuvasak	100.724%	19	Ramos	101.060%	30	Lacorte	101.519%
9	Giusti	100.733%	20	Hedley	101.086%	31	del Pino	101.625%
10	Wurz	100.758%	21	Voisin	101.113%	32	Marinangeli	101.633%
11	Nael	100.759%	22	Sharp	101.127%

Driver did less than three rounds. No average when only one event attended

There were 13 races across the season (taking in all tracks bar Melbourne) which featured enough uninterrupted green flag running for rolling race pace to be calculated, and the advantage of clean air while leading meant the on-the-road winner was quickest every time bar Camara’s costly on-the-limit laptimes at the Red Bull Ring and in the Hungaroring sprint race where Prema’s Ugo Ugochukwu went from sixth to second in the 11 laps between safety car periods.

Since his sole retirement was in Melbourne, and he had no races where laptimes lost to track limits violations prevented a 10-lap rolling average from being formed, Voisin was the sole driver whose season average for race pace was taken from 13 races.

He came 14th in the championship and was 21st on average race pace, but the order (seen in the table above) mostly reflected the championship. One or two high-scoring races can easily lift a driver up the points table while their average pace would put them in a far lower position for the season, and much rarer this year was a driver whose pace was consistently strong but wasn’t reflected by their championship position.

Van Hoepen was such an outlier, who on race pace had an average deficit to the fastest driver only bettered by Camara, Boya and Tsolov yet came 12th in the standings. The Barcelona sprint race was the only time van Hoepen showed the pace to win, but the only time his pace was over 101% of the benchmark was the Monaco feature race and he still finished that in sixth.

After finishing third in the sprint race there, FIA F3 sophomore van Hoepen said “this year has been a way harder start for me than” in 2024 despite being with the same team.

The three ahead of van Hoepen on race pace were consistent, repeatedly maximised their pace once they knew how to and it was shown by their averages all bettering the fastest driver in races from 2024 when a win-free driver was champion.

Points scored

Feature races			Sprint races
Pos	Driver	Points	Pos	Driver	Points
1	Camara	138	1	Stenshorne	54
2	Boya	85	2	Tsolov	44
3	Tsolov	75	3	Inthraphuvasak	42
4	Tramnitz	68	4	Giusti	32
5	Stromsted	63	5	Boya	31
6	Nael	58	6	van Hoepen	30
7	Taponen	46	7	Ugochukwu	30
8	Bilinski	40	8	Tramnitz	26
9	Stenshorne	35	9	Bilinski	25
10	Giusti	35	10	Wurz	25
11	Voisin	35	11	Stromsted	21
12	Inthraphuvasak	32	12	Taponen	21
13	van Hoepen	30	13	Ramos	20
14	Wurz	28	14	Wharton	19
15	Ramos	28	15	Camara	18

Green text signifies sprint race tally exceeding feature race tally

A driver with big contrasts was Inthraphuvasak. He on average was the 18th fastest on absolute pace, and his average starting position for feature races in the season’s first half was 18.2. In the second half it was 8.2, he was on reversed-grid pole twice and that helped him become 2025’s third-highest scoring driver in sprint races and eighth fastest on race pace.

His first win was at Silverstone, where Campos was rapid and he didn’t initially maximise it. Tsolov took pole, Boya was fourth fastest and he was 12th in qualifying.

“My pace has always been there to be in top five,” he claimed after sprint race victory. “It’s just about putting things together, and we struggled with that so far. This weekend, again qualifying a bit unlucky, with a problem and a mistake from my side.”

Hitech GP’s Martinius Stenshorne — sixth on absolute pace and seventh on race pace — finished runner-up to Inthraphuvasak from sixth on the grid in a charging drive. It contributed to the 54 points he scored in sprint races, a tally last reached by a driver in 2021, and like the Campos driver he was enjoying an upwards shift.

Stenshorne said “in the beginning of the season we struggled a bit for race pace”, or “a bit up and down”, but from the Red Bull Ring onwards he was happy with it and he rose from 11th in the standings to fifth in the season’s second half.

Two of the last three rounds were on tracks with long straights, Spa-Francorchamps and Monza, and Benavides was on pole at both. While his AIX team-mates were outside of the top 27 on the grid, Benavides’s pace was genuinely representative of the team’s competitiveness at these circuits in Formula 1’s support series.

Those results helped Benavides be the fourth fastest driver in 2025 on single-lap pace, and the abandonment of the Spa feature race after two laps (both behind the safety car) meant no points and no chance to improve his race pace average.

Brad Benavides

The American’s average start position was 18th in the season’s first half, then 6.4 in the second half. He only scored twice, with his ninth place at the Red Bull Ring followed by fourth in the season-ending Monza feature race in which he led six green flag laps before falling down the order.

Ugochukwu was another driver to cite the Red Bull Ring for a “big turnaround”, particularly in race pace. The laptimes supported his comments, and he went on to finish second in two sprint races which he started from outside the top five. While his single-lap pace was 10th best in the field, still the highest-placed Prema driver, he had the fourth-best average starting position for feature races. It was 15.8 in the season’s first half, then fifth from the Red Bull Ring, where Ugochukwu’s car shed its orange paint to help him meet the minimum weight limit.

One garage which had a less productive time as the year went on but still placed strongly on pace and points was MP Motorsport. Tim Tramnitz said the team “weren’t so happy with the start of the year” due to needing to go on recovery drives, but he came fourth in the championship and team-mate Alessandro Giusti was 10th.

Almost three quarters of Tramnitz’s points came prior to the Red Bull Ring though, with a single point from the last four rounds, while Giusti’s nine-race scoring run was followed by one point in five races. MP was still third in the teams’ standings.

Laps led

1 Camara 97   2 Tsolov 62   3 Inthraphuvasak 39   4 Stenshorne 31   5 Ramos 27   6 Tramnitz 26   =7 Domingues & Wharton 21   9 Benavides 15   10 Boya 12   =11 Slater & Stromsted 10   =13 Voisin & Nael 4   =15 Dufek & del Pino 2   17 Ugochukwu 1

The post Who was fastest in FIA Formula 3 2025? appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: ACI Sport

While the final margin was large, Freddie Slater was made to work hard to become FREC champion in 2025

Freddie Slater was many people’s favourite for the title heading into the 2025 Formula Regional European Championship. The Briton had a record-breaking run to the 2024 Italian Formula 4 title with Prema, and remained with the team for the step up to FRegional, hoping to emulate its previous champions Dino Beganovic, Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Rafael Camara.

Over a 10-round campaign, the last for the first-generation Tatuus T-318 chassis after seven seasons of use, fortunes ebbed and flowed as five drivers from five different teams set the pace. Trident’s Matteo De Palo matched Slater from round one at Misano onwards, but then a dominant double win for Slater in the Monza season finale crowned him with a big points gap.

Slater and Prema possibly made the task than it should have been. The team seemed to lack its pace advantage from past seasons, and between them the drivers in Prema’s three other cars amassed a points tally that was under 44% of Slater’s own.

“[Winning the title feels] pretty crazy, especially with the year we’ve had. It’s not been smooth sailing – we’ve had many wins but also a lot of downs – and it’s been super close,” was Slater’s assessment of the outcome of his campaign.

After being crowned at Monza, he admitted “we’ve made a lot of mistakes, some in our control, some out of our control”.

Slater thanked his mechanics “for fixing all my mistakes and crashes” but is arguably unduly harsh on himself, such are his high standards. His most significant mistake came on the opening lap of the season-opening race, when he squandered his pole advantage through wheelspin, then was trying to go alongside De Palo through turn one when he was spun out after a hit from behind.

De Palo went on to win, forging a 25-point lead Slater took five races to negate. In round six at Imola, a mistake outside of his control cost Slater 18 points when he was disqualified from second due to missing valve caps on his left-hand wheels.

His only podium-free weekend was at the Red Bull Ring. Technical issues meant he qualified 18th for race one, and finished it in 12th, then he was fourth in race two, when he said “the step we had to take was huge and there is not much chance for overtaking”.

Slater at Misano

Slater was the only driver to win both races in a weekend, doing so at both Paul Ricard and Monza. His seventh victory In the season’s penultimate race secured him the title and showed maturity, speed, intelligence and a winner’s mentality.

While he clearly had enough speed to pressure Evan Giltaire for the lead, Slater bided his time as the Frenchman’s tyres slowly gave up the fight. With De Palo down the order after a grid penalty and first-lap wing damage, Slater knew “I just had to wrap it up today” as he told Formula Scout with a smile that evening, but ultimately couldn’t resist the opportunity to do so with a victory.

Arguably his best drive of the year had come a few weeks earlier at Hockenheim, as he charged from fourth to first on a damp track, passing Giltaire, Akshay Bohra (twice) and De Palo before disappearing into the distance.

Slater managed to retain an air of chilled insouciance despite the pressures of the tight run-in against De Palo, and rarely looked flustered, in or out of the cockpit.

His eight wins matched the tally of Gregoire Saucy in 2021 (the first season following the merger with Formula Renault Eurocup), but five fewer than the 13 that Frederik Vesti managed in the 2019 season, which had three more races. Slater’s overall points haul of 313 beat the 20-race record of last year’s champion, Camara, by four.

Slater will unsurprisingly follow Camara’s path to Trident in FIA Formula 3 for 2026, with his camp confiding that “the deal had been done quite early”. Only a brave gambler would bet against him enjoying a similar season to his predecessor.

At the start of the season, the main opposition to Slater had been expected to come from sophomores Giltaire at ART Grand Prix and Pedro Clerot at Van Amersfoort Racing.

Giltaire had started his year by defeating Slater to win the Formula Regional Middle East championship and thus headed back to Europe in an optimistic mood as the highest-placed returning driver. Clerot had finished the previous season just four points adrift of Giltaire. Both had stayed with their 2024 teams, looking to build on solid rookie seasons.

De Palo

However, De Palo struck early by winning the opening race at Misano and would provide the most constant challenge throughout the season.

His victory on the Adriatic coast was not only his maiden win at this level, and his first in cars since Spanish F4 in 2023, but also the first win for his Trident team in its fourth season in the series. “We felt a lot of emotion,” recalled De Palo, and the outpouring of elation on the pit wall as he crossed the line was certainly uplifting.

Clearly, De Palo gelled perfectly with the team; the switch to an Italian team from Sainteloc Racing seemingly providing him with confidence and reassurance.

Trident team manager Luca Zerbini was not surprised by De Palo’s performance:

“From the very first moment we started to work with him, from testing at the end of last season, on the simulator, at all the technical meetings, we saw that is very good, to be honest,” he said. “In winter testing he was performing very, very well. He felt very good with the team straightaway and vice versa.

“He’s smart, and always happy, I would say. We laugh a lot, because sometimes he says funny things also on the radio. But he feels the pressure, like every driver, of course.

“At the end of the day, when you work hard, and you have a good driver in the car, results will come. So, maybe it was a surprise for a lot of people. To be honest, we couldn’t foresee how good the season would be, but we knew that it was going to be a very good season with him.”

Zerbini believes that this year’s results prove the strength of his team’s set-up and staff continuity.

“Last year could have been much better. [Roman] Bilinski had that road accident and was out for a few races. Even when he came back, he was still not at his best, but we were still performing with [Michael] Belov.

De Palo at the Red Bull Ring

“I’m proud of that because the team is very stable, also from the technical point of view. We have three engineers working together since day one in FRegional and even though they are quite different, they are able to work very well together,” he explains.

On De Palo’s day, he was untouchable. His three subsequent wins at the Hungaroring, Red Bull Ring and Barcelona were dominant. He showed that was prepared to fight his rivals wheel-to-wheel as he demonstrated in the opening corners at Misano and Barcelona.

He was a model of consistency, only failing to score points twice – the second race in Austria and the Monza opener – both due to contact damage. Unlike Slater, De Palo was never able to dominate a weekend, his best overall weekend results being a win and a third.

He was unsurprisingly a “bit sad” at losing out in the final weekend and said he “needed to step back a little.”

When he does reflect on his year, one that secured him a place on McLaren’s driver development programme, he can be rightfully proud, even though the way in which he ultimately lost out was a sad and arguably undeserved conclusion. Next year, he will need to take Slater on again, but this time from across the same garage.

Two drivers tied for third place, Clerot and R-ace GP’s Enzo Deligny, with the French-Chinese driver taking the position by virtue of his four victories.

Deligny was a driver with something to prove as he also returned for a second season, having been dropped by the Red Bull junior programme over the winter.

His speed was never in doubt. Indeed, he was arguably the outright fastest driver in FREC this season, even having a slight edge on Slater: measured by the average gap to the best qualifying time in each qualifying group, Deligny was marginally the fastest qualifier of the year, despite struggling in the colder morning temperatures at Monza.

Deligny

Significantly, each of the top qualifiers had at least one disastrous qualifying session, whereas in 2024 Camara managed to post a time among the top four in his group at every race.

As the average times clearly show, the gap at the front was minuscule; evidence of the tightness of this year’s championship.

Qualifying performance

What Deligny lacked was consistency, although he had clearly made huge strides in maturity since his disappointing rookie season.

He was off-the-pace at the opening and closing rounds, where his team-mates Bohra and Jin Nakamura mostly struggled too, while a spin at his home event at Paul Ricard in the summer cost him dearly.

On his day, Deligny was blisteringly quick, as his wins at Spa-Francorchamps, Imola, Barcelona and Hockenheim proved. He and Slater put on some of the seasons’ best battles, notably at Spa and the Hungaroring.

The weekend in Budapest showed both sides of his character, driving a beautiful race to lead and then re-pass Slater when a technical issue arose. A third-placed finish was then lost when he was disqualified for driving in a “dangerous” and “erratic” manner on the slow-down lap.

“This year wasn’t easy,” Deligny commented. “I think the competition has been the toughest it’s ever been. We took four wins, nine podiums and four pole positions and still we barely made it into the top three.”

After what he acknowledged had been a “tricky year” in 2024, he felt that he and R-ace GP had made “a big step”, saying: “we worked really hard during the winter on the set-up and tyre management, and our speed was really good.”

His team principal Thibaut de Merindol agrees that “Enzo has improved a lot compared to last year”.

“He always has been potentially very quick. From the first test we did with him during the summer of 2023, he was able to drive the car very fast but it was very all over the place in many aspects. Where he has improved a lot is, I think, that he’s much more mature as a human being. He’s much more integrated in the team in terms of communication, in terms of feeling comfortable with everyone around.

Deligny

“He opened up a lot. We can joke, we can have fun. Last year he was like a very young teenager; very shy, very defensive. So, he made a huge step. Then the work with the team is much more efficient and I think he’s feeling much more comfortable, and then the performance on track comes.

“Overall, looking at the statistics, I think he’s the best performer in qualifying. We made some mistakes, we lost some points, talking about Hungaroring, but he’s on his way to getting better and better, and he did a mega step.

“When he lost Red Bull, I think it forced him to analyse the situation and understand that he had to change something. I’m very happy.”

And with good reason, as R-ace GP managed to wrestle the teams’ championship back from Prema for the first time since 2021, largely thanks to Deligny’s points. He will move on to Prema for his rookie F3 season in 2026.

Van Amersfoort Racing, like Trident, scored its maiden FRegional win with Pedro Clerot in 2025, just as the popular Dutch team celebrated its 50th year in motor racing. To add icing to the birthday cake, the first win came at Zandvoort, just 80 kilometres west of the team’s base at Zeewolde, with a host of former drivers and guests braving the rain to join in the festivities.

Clerot took both poles in the Netherlands but got mugged into Tarzan in race one by a fast-starting Slater. However, he made amends in race two, with team-mate Hiyu Yamakoshi following him home to make it an even more special weekend for the local team.

The team struggled at the start of the year with Clerot failing to score in either race at Spa, his only non-points finishes all year. As he told Formula Scout at the end of the year: “the year has been 90% strong. After Spa, we’ve been fighting for poles everywhere and I’m happy with the progress we’ve made.

“Spa and Misano were not so good – Misano is a very specific track – but in Zandvoort and Barcelona we had the pace.”

Clerot leads home Yamakoshi at Zandvoort

Though he ultimately just missed out on third in the standings, Clerot “looks back very positively on the season and two years of working well with the team, and not disappointment about the championship.” He swaps VAR for Rodin Motorsport for the move up to F3 in 2026.

The last of the five stand-out drivers, Giltaire somehow remained philosophical and in good humour despite a season that started strongly with a win and a second at Misano before plunging into a deep hole. He and his ART team kept battling and managed to dig their way out of the trough to bounce back with a very strong performance at the last two rounds at Hockenheim and Monza.

The car was clearly not a match for the machines of Prema, at least in Slater’s hands, or R-ace GP, and his defence of the lead at Monza on tyres that were losing grip rapidly was heroic.

Formula Scout has documented his struggles during 2025 previously, and it seems at the time of writing that a berth in Super Formula Lights in Japan beckons. But have no doubts – Giltaire, like the four who finished above him, would enrich any Formula 3 grid. Europe’s loss, though maybe only temporary, is Japan’s gain.

So, what of the rest?

Bohra was the only other driver to win a race, the Indian-American taking a perfect pole position, fastest lap and win at Imola. De Merindol sees a similarly positive development in him as with Deligny: “For a rookie, I think he’s done a very good season. Okay, obviously, Freddie Slater is a rookie as well, but we know the amount of preparation, the experience and the background of Freddie, which Akshay doesn’t have at all.”

Like his team-mates Bohra was off the pace at Misano and Monza, but was able to lead the team’s attack in races such as Paul Ricard where Deligny faltered.

Formula Regional Europe welcomed four Japanese drivers in 2025, helped by both Honda and Toyota placing junior drivers in the series. Hiyu Yamakoshi stayed with VAR where he had shone in F4, SF Lights race winner Jin Nakamura joined R-ace GP, while French F4 champion and Taito Kato lined up at ART Grand Prix, alongside sophomore Kanato Le.

Kato

Yamakoshi admitted to feeling extra pressure to beat his compatriots: “they are nice friends, so I don’t want to break our friendship, but racing is racing, so I want to beat them on the track, of course.”

Honda protege Kato was undoubtedly the most impressive, often pushing more experienced team-mate Giltaire hard. From mid-season he was a regular points scorer, aided by the presence in the paddock of Honda guru Takuma Sato, finishing the year with two fourths at Monza.

Yamakoshi had surprised many in Italian F4 in 2024 but could not match those results upon stepping up to FREC. A poor weekend at Misano dented his confidence, although a front row start and podium in the following race at Spa got his season underway. He followed it up with another second place at Zandvoort, and excelled in the wet part of qualifying, but his year rather tailed off thereafter with just one points finish after the summer break.

Toyota junior Nakamura took time to adapt but his season was the reverse of Yamakoshi’s, picking up momentum from Paul Ricard, apart from a terrible weekend at Imola. However, his season lacked consistency with too many mistakes blemishing his record.

He initially found the step down from SF Lights quite “difficult, because of the lack of grip” but the move had been driven by a push to learn “the tracks, the teams, everything” about racing in Europe. The presence at race weekends of Kazuki Nakajima and Kamui Kobayashi from Toyota provided extra support and motivation, making him, he said, “the happiest man in the paddock.”

The attraction for the Japanese contingent overall, he believes, was the “competitiveness of this championship; every team has good performance.”

All four Japanese drivers will move up to FIA F3, with Nakamura the only one to trade teams, moving to Hitech TGR as his backer looks to move him onto the next step towards F1.

Nakamura

Rashid Al Dhaheri looked promising on occasions at Prema, as the step up to a more powerful car seemed to suit his style after F4. If he remains in FREC, the Mercedes-AMG F1 junior could show his potential. He followed Slater home to take second-place finishes at the Hungaroring and Paul Ricard, where he also topped his qualifying group, in a mid-season run of strong results.

For team-mate Jack Beeton the year was a nightmare from beginning to end. Runner-up to Slater in Italian F4, he now struggled to even score points. His Monza weekend summed up his year: crashing at the first corner in race one, incurring two separate grid penalties for misdemeanours in qualifying for race two and then leaving for IndyNxt testing before the second race.

Prema fielded Doriane Pin in a fourth entry from the second round at Spa, with her F1 Academy commitments taking priority. However, amid the constant swapping from F4 to FRegional machinery she struggled to make an impression and ended her campaign after Paul Ricard to focus on her ultimately title-winning F1 Academy season.

The fourth Prema car was run as a wildcard entry for Pin’s then fellow Mercedes juniors Alex Powell and Yuanpu Cui in three late-season rounds. Neither could get a handle on the car in the limited running available.

Prema has been the gold standard in FRegional since its beginning, with the exception of the very start of the Alpine era, so its apparent struggles were surprising. Was Slater’s talent such that he could compensate for any inherent deficiencies in the set-up or were the other drivers unable to extract the maximum from a front-running car?

Having said that, Prema still got close to the teams’ title in a year when no team apart from R-ace GP took wins with two different drivers.

VAR’s Dion Gowda picked up the official rookie title but with most first-year drivers ineligible having driven in the Middle East series, he had close to no competition. Of the other “eligible” rookies only Edouard Borgna did a full season, although offered little challenge.

Gowda leads Bedrin

Nikita Bedrin put in some strong performances at Sainteloc Racing, notably at the Red Bull Ring, but the team lacked any experienced back-up for most of the year.

For RPM and G4 Racing the sooner the year could end, the better. At least both gained entries for the 2026 championship, not without some drama in G4’s case.

Both seemed to operate revolving doors for their driver line-ups. G4 went through six drivers while the Italo-Irish squad managed to get through 10 drivers in the two remaining cars alongside ever-present Giovanni Maschio.

In truth, Keith Donegan’s team was using the latter part of the season as an extended driver test for 2026 and, Jan Przyrowski, Ean Eyckmans, Reno Francot, Tomass Stolcermanis and James Egozi all showed promise on their limited appearances.

Both outfits have the potential to run at the front and win races, and the series would be poorer without them.

Of the two new teams, Akcel GP only appeared on the eve of the season start and disappeared again after Imola, while CL Motorsport went for experience in their driver line up, and series veteran Belov duly delivered once he had joined the Italian-based team from Spa.

FRegional Europe goes into a new era in 2026 – new Tatuus chassis, a new Toyota-based engine from Autotecnica, and increased direct FIA involvement in technical and marketing matters. In addition, it will introduce some reversed-grid races as part of an overhaul of the calendar.

The final round at Monza also marked the 100th race of the championship’s partnership with Alpine, having adopted the Alpine-badged, Oreca-developed engine from 2021 following its merger with the Formula Renault Eurocup.

The end of the partnership with Alpine marks the end of Renault’s involvement in the junior single-seater ladder. The history of Formula Renault dates back to 1971 and counts the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri among its graduates. FRegional Europe had continued the link through the “by Alpine” suffix to its official championship name.

Nevertheless, the championship can go into its next phase full of optimism if the quality of this year’s drivers is a guide.

The post How Freddie Slater ended a Formula Regional Europe era on top appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photos: ACI Sport

Italian F4 added more races in 2025, but it didn’t mean more starts compared to previous seasons and Kean Nakamura-Berta had to rely on consistency to set a new record in the longest-running F4 championship

After 11 years with regularly massive grids, the Italian Formula 4 championship had to revisit a format change for its seven-round 2025 season. Rather than every event featuring three races, a fourth was added at rounds where entry lists exceeded the 42-car cap. It was a tweak previously needed for 2016’s first two rounds, once in 2022 and for the 2023 season opener.

For those events, qualifying was split into two and the results determined which of three lettered groups drivers would be put into. Three ‘qualifying’ races followed, with groups A and B in the first, A and C in the second, then B and C in the third. Those all lasted 25 minutes-plus-one lap, five minutes shorter than the regular race length, then the event’s points table determined the 36 drivers who progressed into the fourth ‘final’ race. A full season therefore meant, as in previous years, 21 starts.

Since Italian F4 does not use reversed-grid races, and despite historically having had one of the category’s strongest fields in terms of depth, the championship has had a tendency to be dominated and most often by Prema drivers. Six of the first 11 champions won nine or more races, and 2025’s format change rewarded winning with the opportunity to do more winning.

Freddie Slater delivered 15 of Prema’s 16 wins last year, with the odd one out being Kean Nakamura-Berta’s maiden success at Paul Ricard. He had made the podium once in the first 14 races, suffering a dip in confidence that his victory reversed.

“It’s a relief that finally I’ve won a race and I think I’ll treasure this win over many wins I’ve done before because I got a bit of confidence back,” he told Formula Scout at the time, before a run of top-four finishes (including three podiums) to end 2024.

Nakamura-Berta was edged to fifth in the standings and the rookie title by team-mate Alex Powell, and the pair were the highest placed drivers to stay on the grid for 2025. While Japanese-Slovak racer Nakamura lost his Alpine Academy backing in the off-season, he was the title favourite for this year as Powell moved to R-ace GP which had only ran one car full-time in 2024.

Prema’s sophomore star delivered on the title-fighting expectation in the season-opening round at Misano, topping his qualifying group and converting pole into three wins out of three. Rookie Salim Hanna Hernandez topped the other qualifying group but was beaten to race one victory by Prema team-mate Sebastian Wheldon, then came fourth and third in the next two.

A sign of things to come were Powell’s results. He was seventh in Nakamura’s qualifying group, set the fastest lap in his first race but finished 11th, struggled to overtake in the next one and finished eighth, then was a penalised 11th in the ‘final’ race.

Before any precedents could be truly set though, wet weather shook things up during round two at Vallelunga. PHM Racing’s David Cosma Cristofor, who would go on to come 26th in the standings with just seven points, was fastest in qualifying by a huge 1.549 seconds. He jumped from outside of the top 10 to top spot before red flags waved and prevented rivals from reasserting themselves as ahead.

Nakamura topped the other group, which Powell was eighth in, and converted pole into victory in race one. A slow-starting Cosma lost the lead immediately in race two, and Nakamura then looked set for an easy victory. But he came under lots of late pressure and had to put in a defensive masterclass to hold off Wheldon. His fifth win marked the best ever start to a season in Italian F4 history, with no other driver having begun their season with such a long unbeaten run.

He got to watch race three from the garage, and in the chaotic first few laps Wheldon and Powell went from fifth and 10th to first and second. Powell had no answer to Wheldon’s pace, but he was at least back on the podium.

Cosma finished 14th, a result he repeated in race four but by climbing up from 21st rather than falling down the order. Nakamura’s victory hopes ended on lap one as he lost his front wing on the rear of Wheldon’s car, and after pitting he recovered from 28th to 11th as US Racing’s Formula Winter Series champion Gabriel Gomez claimed his first race win after three third places from the first five races.

Most podiums in Italian F4 season

The four-race format was not needed in the next rounds, and at Monza things were super close in qualifying. Pole for all three races was decided by under 0.03s, and the track’s pronounced slipstream effect set up races key for learning wheel-to-wheel skills as well as qualifying’s fine margins.

Wheldon won race one from pole, but at one point Gomez and Nakamura were ahead and he got back past them after going three-wide. Nakamura gained 10 spots from 13th on the grid, while Powell went from 18th to fifth and back again.

Defensive prowess earned Nakamura victory in race two while Wheldon frequently overdid it at the first chicane and Gomez got between them after starting 10th. The Prema team-mates collided in race three, and Newman Chi won.

Powell showed what had been missing at Mugello, although not immediately. He was 0.425s off the pace in Q1, enough for fourth on race one’s grid as Nakamura went quickest, but then he topped Q2 by 0.36s to earn two poles.

Nakamura led lights-to-flag in the safety car-filled race one, then Powell nailed the challenge of a race which included rain and strong winds to land his first win then followed it up with a dominant second victory. His 65-point haul from the weekend equated to 51% of his total tally for the season, and after over six-and-a-half years with its support the Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 team now no longer has Powell’s name on the list of its junior drivers.

A ninth podium of the season significantly grew Nakamura’s points lead as closest title rival Wheldon finished 14th, and it also marked the start of a run of nine podiums in a row.

Round five was at Imola, and the stars of qualifying were Gomez and Prema’s Sasha Bondarev although Nakamura was less than 0.04s off pole twice. Gomez led home Hanna in race one to move up to second in the standings, then race two lasted 17s and was ultimately cancelled.

Newman Chi, Alex Powell and Reno Francot

Chi and Hanna stalled at the start, and were collected by several cars. Yellow flags waved but Kornelia Olkucka still crashed, leading to her Maffi Racing team-mates going off in avoidance of debris but ending their races.

Van Amersfoort Racing’s Maximilian Popov spun, other drivers had heavy crashes and when red flags waved 16 drivers were already out. Due to noise curfews preventing a restart, the race was rescheduled to feature in the final round at Misano.

Race three was the next day. Nakamura fought his way past poleman Bondarev on lap one before the safety car appeared, then pulled away after the restart. Bondarev closed back in, along with Popov, and Nakamura was warned over his defending before the safety car reappeared. Once again he got his tyres up to temperature to get a gap on the restart, but a lap later was back defending. Bondarev got past on the outside into Tamburello with two laps to go to win, as Popov lost out to Chi and later Gomez and Hanna.

The season’s only round abroad took place at Spanish track Barcelona, and sophomore Emanuele Olivieri returned to form to become R-ace’s lead driver in the standings. He had made the podium twice at Misano, finished second in the fourth Vallelunga race and then taken top-five finishes in the next two rounds but not reached similar heights to Powell despite comfortably beating him to the F4 Middle East title at the start of the year.

In Barcelona qualifying, Olivieri claimed two poles and was 0.118s shy of a third while Powell was 15th and 13th in the two sessions. Nakamura claimed race one pole, and Gomez and Wheldon were on the front row of the next two races.

Gomez stalled, got hit at turn two, punctured then pitted on race one’s opening lap, and retired shortly after. Nakamura dominated, extending his championship lead over Gomez to 80 points while Wheldon faded to sixth late in the race.

Race two was declared wet, and began behind the safety car since the field thought it was dry enough to start on slick tyres. Olivieri appeared to make an error bringing the pack up to racing speeds, and lost out to Gomez and Nakamura who were evenly matched until the safety car returned late on. Popov landed his fourth podium as Olivieri finished fifth.

Emanuele Olivieri

Heavy rain meant race three was red-flagged early. Wheldon led Nakamura, but as the race was abandoned it counted for nothing. The four-race format returned for the 44-car Misano finale, but the rescheduled encounter made it a five-race event.

Wheldon pipped Gomez to race one pole by 0.078s, Gomez returned the favour by 0.044s for race two, then also clinched race three pole. A controlled display by Wheldon to win race one wasn’t enough to keep his title hopes alive as Nakamura put in a composed display in second place, earned by passing Popov.

Gomez’s group was back on track for race two, but he didn’t get to line up from pole as an alternator meant he couldn’t even get to the grid and joined the race for one lap later on. Nakamura was already one point away from the title due to dropped scores, so it was comfortably secured as he finished third behind Wheldon and Chi.

Wheldon returned to second in the standings, but was not in race three in which Gomez handled a late attack from Hanna for his fourth win and move back ahead by 16 points.

The combined results put Wheldon and Gomez first and sixth on race four’s grid, and Gomez lost ground early on with a grassy moment. Wheldon was fastest on track throughout but lost the lead to Nakamura early on took a while to recover it. The championship’s top thee finished where they started, and Wheldon moved one point ahead of Gomez.

The ball was back in Gomez’s court for the season-ending rescheduled Imola race, as he had pole. Nakamura also had an opportunity to not only break Italian F4’s record podium tally for a season, but to do it in 20 races rather than 21.

Gomez led all the way until the last lap when, having held off many overtaking attempts, Nakamura got a run on him onto the back straight and after putting two wheels on the grass snatched first place. The champion got his ninth win and podium record, Gomez clinched runner-up spot as Wheldon finished seventh and Williams junior Bondarev took his second podium.

Gabriel Gomez

Hanna came fourth in the standings with sixth podiums, and will step up to a 2026 Formula Regional European Championship seat with Prema, but on a points-per-race basis Tomass Stolcermanis had the potential to be in that position. He only did the first two rounds with Prena, but claimed a podium and three other top-five finishes that still put him 11th in the championship.

PHM’s Reno Francot was another impressive part-timer, his three-round run beginning with a double podium at Mugello.

Existing under the same promoter as Italian F4 is E4, a sister ‘continental’ championship contested by most of the paddock and is essentially three further Italian F4 rounds with their own points table.

Ugo Ugochukwu and James Wharton’s 2023 record of five podiums in a season was thoroughly beaten by Nakamura this year as he picked up four victories, three runner-up finishes, a third and a fourth from the nine-race campaign. Despite taking the title by 47 points, it wasn’t wrapped up until the final race which was two weeks after his Italian F4 crowning.

The wins were shared by Gomez and Francot in round one at Paul Ricard in France so Gomez left the track as points leader, then Powell denied Nakamura a triple pole at Mugello. Nakamura resisted Powell’s early attacks in race one there to win, then did the same in race two but a track limits penalty demoted him to second between Powell and Francot.

Wheldon romped to race three victory ahead of Powell, and Francot overtook Nakamura to cause his sole podium-free race.

At the Monza finale, Nakamura won a dramatic race one, fended off title rival Gomez in race two then undid the places lost at the start of race three to become the first ever champion of both Italian F4 and E4 with another win. Francot was third in the points.

Had those events been incorporated into Italian F4’s schedule, here’s how the points table would have looked…

Combined 2025 Italian F4 + E4 table

The post How Nakamura-Berta broke podium records en route to F4 title double appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photos: Japanese F4

The rivalry between Honda and Toyota continued in Japanese F4 this year, and title honours went to the latter

Over 14 races across six rounds, and five circuits, the next generation of Japanese racers did battle in their home country’s Formula 4 championship this year. Honda and Toyota, both now involved in Formula 1 once more as well as powering the cars in Japan’s top-tier Super Formula championship, each backed and ran several drivers and once again it resulted in a title.

After Honda junior Yuto Nomura had took home the crown in 2024, this time Toyota junior Tokiya Suzuki was the champion and while driving for the Toyota Gazoo Racing Driver Challenge Racing School.

The season started at Fuji Speedway on May 1-4 with a triple-header round and a 45-car grid.

Ryo Shirasaki topped the opening qualifying session of the year, setting a 1m45.885s to pip Kageyama Racing team-mate and Porsche Japan junior Itsuki Sato to pole by 0.092 seconds. Toyota junior Kiyoshi Umegaki was the next best driver, 0.427s off pole as 0.066s split third to sixth place. A second covered the top 12, with the slowest driver 5.423s off the pace.

Sunny conditions greeted the paddock for 2025’s first race, and there was drama from the off as Sato started very slowly and Shirasaki lurched forward then stopped.

Suzuki, from fourth on the grid, took the lead ahead of Umegaki while Sato dropped to fifth but was able to get up to third before the end of lap one. The slipstream available down the lengthy pit straight meant Suzuki never pulled away, and Sato made it a three-car group on lap five of 14.

Umegaki responded by going down Suzuki’s inside at turn one next time by, with Suzuki drawing back alongside approaching turn three but unable to pass. B-MAX Racing’s Tosei Moriyama joined the fight just before the safety car was summoned as debris was cleared from a two-car crash at turn 13.

Tokiya Suzuki

Racing resumed on lap nine and at turn one it was three-wide for the lead. Positions were held, while Syo Momose tried passing B-MAX team-mate Ayato Iwasaki for fifth at turn 13 but ended up losing two places.

There was no further battling up front before the safety car returned for the last two-and-a-half laps as B-MAX boss “Dragon”‘s stranded car was cleared from the turn one runoff. That secured victory for Suzuki, and meant Sato finished 11th as he had a five-second penalty for a start violation.

Shirasaki recovered to eighth, the place earned after it took several laps to pass Toyota junior Megumu Suzuki.

He had a chance at redemption in race two, having set a 1m45.935s to earn another pole by 0.116s over Sato. Tokiya Suzuki and Umegaki qualified third and fourth.

This time Shirasaki not only nailed the start but already had a big lead a few corners in, with Sato under pressure from several drivers behind. A turn one crash meant the safety car appeared on lap two, and Shirasaki ran away again once racing resumed on lap seven to win by 3.467s.

Moriyama was isolated in fourth, a position he took from Umegaki on the restart. Momose tried to go past on the inside too but they clashed, and he dropped to 20th.

Umegaki was instead passed by Honda junior Kotaro Shimbara and Ponos Racing’s Ryota Horachi, the 2024 Japanese F4 runner-up. The pair battled thereon, swapping places several times but that resulting in Umegaki getting back past them before the finish. However Horachi was classified fifth, as a five-second penalty demoted Umegaki to 10th.

Drivers’ race one fastest laps set race three’s grid, putting Sato on pole ahead of Shirasaki, Moriyama and Tokiya Suzuki.

Itsuki Sato

The poleman held the lead on the inside line into the opening corner, and Suzuki took third but Moriyama reclaimed it around the outside of turn three. It was three-wide for seventh heading to turn one the next lap, but the safety car was then called as five crashed cars needed clearing up.

Sato looked to the outside then the inside when racing resumed, and was alongside through turn one where two cars further back crashed. That led to another safety car interruption that ran to the end of a shortened 11-lap race.

The safety car accelerated away at turn 12 on lap 10, but Shirasaki came to a stop there with a drivetrain issue and seventh-placed Horachi also stopped with a fuel system. That meant the safety car had to remain out, and handed Sato victory.

Fuji also hosted round two on July 31-August 3, and this time Sato took a double pole. His fastest qualifying lap, a 1m46.341s, earned him race one pole by 0.158s over Shimbara, with Shirasaki trailing by 0.329s and Momose by 0.401s. Tokiya Suzuki was 10th fastest. Sato’s second-best laptime, a 1m46.375s, put him on race two pole by 0.224s. The top four was the same, and Suzuki was only 12th.

Race one had two formation laps due to a staller, then red flags waved half a lap in due to oil being laid down from the grid to turn two by Toyota junior Masana Muto. Sato had fended off an attack from Shimbara into turn one.

The race restarted behind the safety car 19 minutes later, and after two laps the field was released with four-and-a-half minutes left on the race clock. A turn one backmarker collision meant the safety car was summoned mid-lap, and the chequered flag waved a lap later. Sato earned half-points for victory, and a 40s penalty for overtaking behind the safety car dropped Suzuki from sixth to 38th.

The next day’s race ran green throughout. Shimbara went down Sato’s inside into the opening corner to take the lead, and on lap two Sato turned the outside there into the inside for turn three where he reclaimed first place.

Results round-up

The top three places were settled by the end of that lap, with Momose fourth. A charging Horachi, from seventh on the grid, was ahead by lap six. A lap three off sent Moriyama down to sixth, and Suzuki climbed up to seventh.

Round three at Suzuka followed on August 21-24, and Shimbara set the qualifying pace. A 2m08.212s earned him race one pole by 0.143s over points leader Sato, with OTG Motor Sports’ Kenta Kumagai 0.231s behind and Horachi a further 0.035s back in fourth. Suzuki qualified fifth, and a second covered the top 18.

Shimbara’s second-best laptime, marginally slower at 2m08.305s, delivered race two pole by 0.234s and this time Horachi was second. He edged Sato by 0.014s and Kumagai by 0.031s. Shirasaki qualified seventh and 12th, and a rules violation meant Moriyama had no laptimes count so started on the 15th row for both races.

Sato got alongside Shimbara into the first corner of race one, and stayed wheel-to-wheel until the poleman established himself ahead at turn three. Suzuki got up to third before the safety car was called due to a crash, and Shimbara weaved from turn 17 onwards ahead of the lap four restart.

It worked, as he was unchallenged while others fought behind. Horachi passed Kumagai for fourth into the chicane on lap six, then the safety car was needed again on lap eight.

Shimbara repeated his restart tactic for the final lap, but this time Sato was alongisde on the outside at turn one and that became the inside for turn three where he snatched the lead. Horachi tried going around Suzuki’s outside at turn 13 but went off and had to settle for fourth. Momose held off Shirasaki for sixth, Moriyama recovered to 16th and Drago Corse lost both of its drivers to crashes.

Shimbara, who was third in the 2024 standings, followed up three runner-up finishes with victory in race two. A crash meant the safety car interrupted lap one, and more drivers followed Shimbara in weaving before the lap three restart.

The field at Suzuka

Sato went straight past Horachi, who then had to hold off Momose into the final chicane. He slipstreamed past as lap four of 11 began, by which point Shimbara had a 1.5s lead and there was another 1.5s gap to third.

The safety car was needed again on lap six, and Shimbara was unchallenged on the lap nine restart. Racing was neutralised again a lap later due to two crashers at turn 15, locking in everyone’s positions to the end.

Akiland Racing’s Keito Matsui was hung out to dry on the outside at the chicane on lap four and fell from fifth to eighth, with Ponos’s Ryuma Sako then going around Kumagai’s outside when they reached turn one to take the position. But he went off at turn two and conceded three places, lifting Tokiya Suzuki to sixth.

Sato left Suzuka with a 39.5-point lead over Suzuki, with Shimbara the only other driver to have scored more than half of Sato’s 123.5-point tally.

Racing moved to Sportsland Sugo for round four on September 18-21, which was another triple-header.

Tokiya Suzuki claimed his first poles of the season, and by a comfortable margin. A 1m32.355s put him on top of the times in qualifying by 0.433s over team-mate Takahiro Kikuchi, then 0.042s split Sato, Kumagai and Megumu Suzuki in third to fifth place. Shirasaki was sixth, and Shimbara qualified 12th.

For race two, a 1m32.607s put Suzuki on pole by 0.279s. Kikuchi was second again, Sato trailed by 0.37s in third and Shirasaki pipped Kumagai to fourth by 0.006s. Shimbara’s final lap put him seventh.

A damp track, particularly on the inside of the grid, meant the safety car led a slick-shod field through the first two laps of race one. Suzuki instantly created a gap once racing got underway, as Kikuchi went off at turn one and rejoined in fifth then lost another spot.

Suzuki and Sato

Sato took second and was initially 1.2s behind, but by lap 11 he had cut the deficit to 0.434s and remained in Suzuki’s mirrors thereon. The lead fight ended on lap 14 of 17 as Ragno Motor Sport’s Kaoru Yoshida crashed out of 10th and triggered a safety car period than ran to the end.

Kumagai held third place throughout, with Megumu Suzuki initially fourth before Shirasaki took the position and pressured Kamagai for several laps. He was eventually shaken off, and TGM Grand Prix’s Leon Ochiai finished fifth ahead of Umegaki, Suzuki and Matsui, who was warned for clashing with Momose when defending. Kikuchi was 10th.

Puddles remained for race two, but slick tyres were used again and the safety car featured for the first two laps.

Suzuki’s early pace advantage was even more pronounced this time, although part of the reason he had a 3.7s lead by lap seven was down to Sato trying to go down Kikuchi’s inside at turn one on lap six and contact being made which sent Kikuchi spinning and meant he finished 34th.

Sato then chased down Suzuki, and was 1.488s behind when the leader rode some kerbs and almost spun on lap 15. That brought the gap down to 0.585s, and Sato was all over him on the final lap.

Shirasaki was a lonely third, then Sako, Kumagai, Shimbara and Matsui were fighting behind. Kumagai went off at the final corner on lap 11, which consigned him to ninth, and Matsui went around the outside of Shimbara through turn three on the last lap but a five-second penalty for dangerous driving dropped him from fifth to 14th.

Race one’s fastest laps set race three’s grid, and Sato beat Tokiya Suzuki to pole by just 0.046s. The safety car was utilised in the same way as the previous day, and Sato romped to victory.

A field of over 40 cars at Fuji

He was 2.1s clear when the safety car was called on lap 11 after Horachi’s overtaking attempt on OTG’s Miki Onaga for ninth at Horseback Corner led to them colliding and spinning. Four laps remained when green flags waved again, and Sato pulled away by 1.583s. Shirasaki and Umegaki were third and fourth, while Shimbara’s title homes were significantly diminished in 16th after also non-scoring in race one by finishing 13th.

Sato had a 32.5-point lead over Suzuki with two rounds to go, with Shirasaki 84 points back and Shimbara needing to win every remaining race and requiring Sato to score no more than three points and Suzuki no more than 36.

Their hopes ended in race two at Autopolis on October 18, as Sato collected his 10th successive top-two finish while Suzuki earned his fourth victory of 2025 (but only his fifth finish in the top two).

The title contenders didn’t contest race one on Saturday, as Japanese F4’s ‘champion’ and ‘independent’ classes were split for the weekend in qualifying and the races. Races one and three were contested by the latter, while the usual frontrunners were in races two and four.

Field Motorsports’ “Kentaro” set a 1m55.650s to take race one pole by 0.413s, with 0.085s splitting Nobuhiro Imada (B-MAX), Yasuhiro Shimizu (B-MAX) and Masayuki Ueda (Rn-sports) in second, third and fourth. “Kentaro” converted pole into victory with ease on Saturday, and Imada was way ahead of Ueda. “Dragon” was fourth, and there was one retiree in the 16-car field.

Second-best laptimes from Friday’s qualifying established race three’s grid for Sunday morning, putting “Kentaro” on pole again but by a tiny margin. His 1m56.080s earned him first place by 0.065s over Imada, with Shimizu 0.09s off pole.

It was incredibly foggy, and the safety car led the first six laps. After green flags waved, Imada went to “Kentaro”‘s outside of turn three, which became the inside for turn four where he took the lead. Shimizu and Ueda got past later in the lap, then the safety car returned on lap eight as “Dragon” and Rn-sports’ Isao Nakashima crashed out while disputing fourth.

The race ended after 10 of the scheduled 13 laps, with Imada victorious. In one weekend, “Dragon” had gone from being the class’s points leader to sitting behind “Kentaro” and Imada in the standings.

In the ‘championship’ class, most set personal bests after three or four laps in qualifying, with only one driver improving late on. Tokiya Suzuki was quickest, by a tiny 0.01s, after setting a 1m53.535s and Moriyama made a return to form by being second fastest. Sato was third, 0.233s back and 0.022s ahead of Muto and Shirasaki. Momose was 0.276s off pole in sixth.

Moriyama fared even better on second-best laptimes, taking race four pole with a 1m53.685s. Top spot was earned by 0.111s, with Shirasaki beating Sato to second by 0.005s. Momose and Muto were next up, and Suzuki qualified seventh.

Suzuki led race two lights-to-flag, while Moriyama had lost out to Sato, Muto by the opening corner then was wheel-to-wheel with Shirasaki until turn four where he nosed back ahead.

Shimbara started eighth and was past Shirasaki for fifth before the safety car appeared due to fluid on track. The field was released again on lap four, and Shirasaki took fourth in a three-wide move at turn one. He then stuck with Muto, while the top two streaked away. Suzuki was victorious by 6.675s over Sato, with Muto a further 1.95s behind.

On lap nine of 13 Momose passed Shimbara, who then slid off at the last corner and was overtaken by Horachi too.

Moriyama was outdone at the start again the next day, this time conceding the lead to Shirasaki immediately then running side-by-side with Sato until turn four where he braked later. Sato was forced to go wide, dropping to seventh then reclaiming a spot by passing Muto. Horachi was also sent wide during a multi-car squabble mid-lap, and Sato slipped through for fifth.

With no interruptions, Shirasaki was able to build a 5.969s lead over Moriyama, who had Momose, Suzuki, Sato and Horachi in a train behind him the rest of the race but without anyone attacking each other.

Ryo Shirasaki

Sato’s first podium-free race since the season opener led to his championship lead being reduced to 23.5 points ahead of the finale at Twin Ring Motegi on October 30-November 2.

Shimbara and Shirasaki outpaced the title contenders in qualifying, with 0.067s splitting the pair. Suzuki was 0.119s off Shimbara’s 2m00.232s pole time in third, and just 0.002s faster than Sato. Moriyama languished down in 18th, behind four ‘independent’ drivers including Ken Alex who was fifth fastest overall.

However the two classes had run separately, with the independents getting a grippier track, and Alex would lead their contingent from 30th on the grid.

It was a different story at the front when it came to second-best laptimes, and a late 2m00.637s earned Sato pole for the title decider by an all-important 0.055s over rival Suzuki. Alex was third fastest and 0.111s shy of overall pole, but would start 30th again and instead Shirasaki and Umegaki filled row two of the grid.

There was drama before race one began, as at the end of the formation lap Sato signalled he was unable to start his car and so a second formation lap was added while his car was wheeled into the pitlane.

Suzuki was hungry to capitalise from that stroke of luck to the maximum and he attacked Shirasaki into turns two and four on the opening lap. He got his move done, and Toyota junior Yuzuki Miura followed him through.

Later in the lap Horachi overtook Shirasaki too, while Sato joined the action but then stopped at the side of the track. Another driver spun, and the safety car was summoned on lap two to clear the two cars. Horachi had taken third before racing was neutralised, and the gap that had already opened up to the top two was eradicated.

Racing resumed on lap five of 12, and Umegaki was next to clear Shirasaki. He then lost out in a fight with Sako, while Umegaki escaped up the road and passed Miura mid-race.

Shimbara claimed his second win of 2025 by 3.924s, with Suzuki closing to within 5.5 points of Sato by finishing second.

“Kentaro” had entered the weekend 0.5 points ahead of Imada, with “Dragon” 15 points from the top. By finishing 29th, Imada moved to top of the ‘independent’ class standings by 9.5 points.

With the overall title contenders sharing the front row for the finale, the stakes were at their highest.

Suzuki made the better start and took the lead on the inside turn one but locked up. That allowed Sato to do a switchback and be on the inside for the second part of the twin-apex corner where he got ahead. Their rear wheels rubbed and Suzuki was sent over the outside kerbs, but he maintained speed and went down Sato’s inside at turn three. That led to banging wheels again at the exit, and Sato was sent far into the dirt of the runoff and after rejoining was down in 25th.

It looked like the title was now over for Sato, but both drivers got five-second penalties for contact and Shirasaki went around the outside of Suzuki at turn four for the lead.

The safety car was on track from laps two to four, and in the racing that followed Sato charged up to 13th before his penalty knocked him back down a spot. His title ambitions rested in how potent Suzuki’s penalty would prove, but it only dropped him from second to fourth so the Toyota junior clinched the crown by 6.5 points.

Shirasaki won, Umegaki bookended his season with second place finishes, and Miura made the podium after fending off Horachi. Kentaro finished 26th, and Imada beat him to the title by half a point by finishing 2.247s behind him in 27th.

2025 championship standings

In early October, Honda Racing School held its final scholarship selection test of the year at Suzuka and its principal Takuma Sato, a former IndyCar and Formula 1 driver, picked Kota Tsuchihashi to be a Honda junior in single-seaters next year.

The 18-year-old graduated from karts, where he represented Japan at the Motorsport Games, into his home country’s entry-level Super FJ category this year and will likely spend 2026 racing in either French F4 or Japanese F4.

The post How Toyota took back title honours from Honda in Japanese F4 this year appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Toyota Gazoo Racing NZ

FIA superlicence points may have been the obvious target in FRegional Oceania for the driver at the front of Red Bull’s junior team queue, but he also achieved something more important to his backer: domination

Dr Helmut Marko does not hand his Red Bull juniors a chance to race in Formula 1 just because they have the FIA superlicence required to do so, but because they leave a strong impression on him. The best place to do that is Formula 2, right under the nose of the F1 paddock, but it’s the hardest championship to achieve it in.

Gabriel Bortoleto thrust himself into F1 seat contention by winning the 2024 F2 title, but the points table wasn’t reflective of which drivers impressed the most. Formula Scout’s analysis of the season’s statistical quirks highlighted how the drivers who came sixth and 12th in the standings shone strongly enough to merit F1 graduations, and on reflection it’s a surprise that nobody said these drivers didn’t deserve their chance for 2025.

That’s because of historical precedent, rather than any reflection of their abilities, as previous instances of drivers stepping up to F1 after a disappointing year in junior single-seaters has led to far more scepticism of teams’ line-up choices.

Red Bull likes winners, particularly in the mould of its four-time F1 world champion Max Verstappen. That direct comparison has worked against the brand over the past decade as it has wasted top talents, but when a driver does something to look like they’re on an ‘unstoppable’ rise then Red Bull moves to basically enable that to happen.

Prior to 2025, Lindblad was not a winning machine. But because of how deeply he has impressed so many of the people he has worked with, Red Bull has been proactive in finding the quickest but most effective way to move him up the ladder. It has done the same with others, but it’s not worked out when they’ve arrived underprepared at a level they can’t win at immediately.

Photo: Bruce Jenkins

That could prove to be the case as Lindblad steps up to F2 later this year, which would hurt the ‘unstoppable’ narrative that is now attached to the 17-year-old thanks to his superlicence eligibility for 2026. But Red Bull protected its investment against that PR risk by sending him over to New Zealand last month, where there was a lot of domestic interest but limited international attention until he was crowned champion (at which point the superlicence points he earned made Formula Regional Oceania relevant to F1 media), and prove he could be a winning machine.

If it needed to justify promoting Lindblad to an F1 seat in 2026, it can point to him romping to a title in 2025.

Lindblad, driving for the crack M2 Competition team, rose to the task as he made the podium in every single non-reversed-grid race and won six out of the 10. While on his victory streak, there was an evolution in Lindblad’s reaction to his success. At first there was gratitude that he had won, but pace concerns that he held through the first two rounds despite six successive podiums (including the reversed-grid races).

When he finally felt that M2 was maximising its package, and put in some dominant displays that were sometimes stymied by safety car interruptions, Lindblad was more happy with the results because he felt he had driven at the pace the team knew was possible to achieve rather than underdelivering en route to victory.

That was also noticable with tyre saving, and more than once Lindblad literally baked in that advantage via qualifying. His ability to put in a lap good enough for pole (a remarkable feat given the tiny gaps between drivers often seen) meant he was able end his sessions early and by setting fewer laps than his opposition he could start races with a tyre life advantage.

M2 returned to ‘struggling’ in the final round at Highlands Motorsport Park, but in the three segments of qualifying he was just 0.098, 0.145 and 0.194 seconds off the pace. That he ended up qualifying fifth in Q3 with a deficit of less than 0.2s to the poleman Broc Feeney – who was admittedly a single-seater debutant cameoing with MTEC Motorsport – showed how fine the margins were between excellence and being out of podium contention.

2025 championship standings

Lindblad had a pace advantage on leader Patrick Heuzenroeder (MTEC) in the first half of race one, but after coming under pressure from behind later was comfortably gapped and had to make do with wrapping up the title in second.

In race two he was wiped out on the opening lap, ruining his average finishing position but also providing M2 with a major repair job as his car ended up in the barriers. The championship’s allocated spare tub was available and his car was essentially rebuilt around that to ensure he could compete in the New Zealand Grand Prix.

He put on an attacking drive in the season-ending race, and clearly had a pace advantage on the drivers ahead, but found overtaking incredible difficult to pull off without exceeding track limits and finished 1.86s behind Giles Motorsport’s winner Will Brown in third.

Since there were tiny gaps all season, and sub-minute laps at Teretonga, the best way to assess Lindblad’s gap to the rest of the field on pace is in percentage terms. There his advantage is stark, as Lindblad was on average only 0.058% off the absolute pace and 0.316% ahead of team-mate Matias Zagazeta who was best of the rest. That same gap covered Zagazeta in second down to other team-mate Michael Shin who was on average the ninth fastest driver.

The last champion to exceed Lindblad’s tally of six victories was Mitch Evans in 2011, and two-time Daniel Gaunt is the only other driver to manage it in the 2000s. Evans and Lando Norris each had title-winning campaigns featuring eight pole positions, again the only examples of drivers trumping Lindblad’s tally, and his 12 podiums is a total last exceeded by a champion back in 2011. However due to his retirement in race two of the final round, Lindblad’s average race position is also the third worst by a champion. Regardless, he proved he could be a winning machine.

Absolute pace

No average when only one event attended

The post The trait more valuable than superlicence points that Lindblad now has appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Ida Wood

The end-of-year classics once again attracted big names, but the national and regional series in Formula Ford in its various forms also had strong grids in 2024. Here’s what happened across the world

United Kingdom

Home of the two biggest events for the category, the Formula Ford Festival and Walter Hayes Trophy, the UK had plenty of FFord action in 2024 and the main home of it for contemporary machinery was the United FFord championship. Morgan Quinn added yet another title to Team Dolan’s tally, beating PWR1 Racing’s Jason Pribyl by 37 points. Pribyl had started the season on top with victory at Silverstone, and he won again at Lydden Hill while Quinn was victorious at Donington Park and Castle Combe. Read the reports on all of the race action here, and check out the multi-nation 2025 calendar here.

Over in Northern Irish FF1600 there was another Dolan champion, as Jason Smyth romped to the crown. He scored over one-and-a-half times as many points as Team DDR’s four-time champion David McCullough in second place. Pipping Quinn to third in the standings was Stephen O’Connor, then at the Martin Donnelly Trophy meeting just 0.421 seconds split winner Smyth, team-mate Jordan Kelly and McCullough in the thrilling main race.

It took almost a decade for TM Racing’s Felix Fisher to become Castle Combe FF1600 champion, but after finally getting the job done in 2022 he has now won three titles in a row. His brother Josh, who drives for Wayne Poole Racing, contested the opening round and won both races to take an early points lead but did not appear again and so it became a four-way fight between Felix, B-M Racing’s Rory Smith, WPR’s Alex Walker and Swift Cooper’s Luke Cooper for title honours.

Once Fisher’s 52 points of dropped scores was taken into account, he became champion by just three points over Smith, who was championship runner-up on victory countback over Walker, while Cooper was only a further 11 points behind.

You can click the hyperlinked text to read about all of the drama at the 2024 FFord Festival and Walter Hayes Trophy. The result of the former is still provisional, with the national court set to hear an appeal that could change who wins.

Photo: Freddie Beckett/United FFord

United States

The SCCA National Runoffs at Road America in October featured races for Formula Continental (which uses FF2000 cars) and Formula F (where 1600cc engines from Ford and Honda are used). Michael Varacins was the FContinental winner, leading home Robert Allaer by 2.661s, and Tazio Stefanelli pipped Sebastian Mateo Naranjo by 0.111s in FF. First to meet the chequered flag was former Team USA scholar and four-time Runoffs winner Jonathan Kotyk, but post-race he got a penalty that dropped him down to eighth place.

The national F1600 Championship Series lacks the second ‘F’ because of its use of Honda rather than Ford engines, and ran over seven rounds in 2024. Team Pelfrey’s Naranjo swept to the title in one of the newest cars on the grid (albeit it already being a decade old), and Timothy Steele was runner-up. Naranjo was unbeaten in the season-opening round at Road Atlanta and the Pittsburgh triple-header, while Steele only won once in the 19-race campaign at New Jersey Motorsports Park.

USF2000 podium-finisher Thomas Schrage won all three races at Mid-Ohio, then Iron Rock Motorsports’ second-year driver Cooper Shipman took a win before Naranjo was twice victorious at Lime Rock. He brought his win tally up to eight with single successes at Road America and NJMP, and the other two races at Road America went to USF2000 racer Ayrton Houk.

His fellow 2023 Team USA scholar Jack Sullivan won race one of the Summit Point finale, with race two going to Shipman.

Canada

Britain West Motorsport’s Connor Clubine won Ontario’s Toyo Tires F1600 series in 2024 and both of the F1600 support races at the Grand Prix de Trois-Rivieres.

In the opening Toyo Tires round at Mosport, Antonio Costantino took pole by almost half a second but lost the lead to Clubine three laps into race one. He later regained it for one lap before Clubine kept ahead through the race’s second half.

Clubine led Costantinto lights-to-flag in race two, but it was far more exciting in race three as they traded first place eight times and even Henderson Knox (Henderson Racing) got ahead of both briefly early on. Ultimately, Clubine won again.

At Shannonville Motorsport Park the dominant streak of Clubine began, as he comfortably took pole and won all three races with fastest lap. On the return to Mosport he had a smaller advantage in qualifying, but romped to race one victory by 13.146s. Knox beat Costantino to second by 0.135s after passing him on the final lap. Race two went to Clubine, and Costantino won race three.

Although Clubine dominated qualifying for round four at Mosport, Costantino passed him with four laps to go of race one and held on to win by a miniscule 0.006s. Knox set the fastest lap and was only a second behind the top two. It took four laps for Clubine to go from fourth to the lead in race two, then he sprinted off to win by 16.477s as less than a second covered second to sixth place. Clubine’s victory tally hit double figures in race three.

In qualifying at Calabogie Motorsports Park there was just 0.086s between Clubine and Costantino, and the gap between them was only six times larger in race one. Just 0.227s split them in race two, then Knox was Clubine’s closest race three rival.

Costantino convincingly took a second pole in the Mosport finale, and in race one there was a different leader on six successive laps before Clubine got his car ahead and kept it there. However he only won by 0.398s. The battle with Costantino went on even longer in race two, with nine laps of lead changes then a period of Clubine behind until he nipped past his rival in a photo finish by 0.085s. The pair fought through the first five laps of race three, then Clubine yet again administered last-lap heartbreak as he snuck past for his 16th win by 0.234s.

Photo: GP3R

Although Clubine became champion by 111 points, it was Constantino who won the Team Canada Scholarship and a seat in the FFord Festival, along with GB4 podium-finisher Callum Baxter.

The races at GP3R were part of the F1600 Canada series, which kicked off at Mosport and had rounds at Quebec’s Mont-Tremblant circuit either side of the grand prix races also in the province. Round one shared grids with Toyo Tires F1600, and there was only four points-scoring drivers from the rival series. Murdoch Racing’s Duncan Murdoch got the points for victory by finishing 16th, 13th and 12th in the three races.

Category veteran Didier Schraenen won all three races on the first trip to Mont-Tremblant, and Bertrand Godin, Schraenen and Murdoch filled the three spots immediately behind Clubine in race one. It was the same order for the top three points scorers in race two, although Godin was 12.419s off Clubine and Murdoch was almost a minute behind the winner in seventh.

Olivier Dulac won all three races of the Mont-Tremblant finale, beating Michael Di Paolo and Martin Janson in race one, Di Paolo and Murdoch in race two then those two in reversed positions in race three.

Australia

The national series visited seven different circuits, starting off at the iconic and fearsome Mount Panorama circuit. Jack Bussey led Cody Maynes-Rutty and Eddie Beswick in qualifying, then in the five-lap race one (with each lap taking over 141s to complete due to the circuit length) Alatek Racing’s Harrison Sellars came through to win ahead of Maynes-Rutty and Beswick.

Race two was shorter, and Maynes-Rutty was victorious by 0.3847s over Beswick. CHE Racing’s Daniel Frougas was third.

A full race distance was achieved in the third encounter, although two of the seven laps were behind the safety car. Beswick won by 0.184s over Kobi Williams, and Maynes-Rutty was only 0.433s behind as a second covered the top five.

Photo: Australian FFord [L-R: Williams, Buswick, Bussey]

Bussey again set the qualifying pace, by just 0.0184s over Zak Lobko, and 13 drivers were within a second of pole. In race one the first place spot on the grid was successfully converted into victory by Bussey, as Sellars and Kobi Williams completed the podium. Lobko comfortably won race two, ahead of Sellara and Liam Loiacono.

Sydney Motorsport Park hosted round three, which was also a New South Wales FFord event. Williams pipped Lobko to pole by 0.0839s, with Maynes-Rutty 0.1985s off the top and again a top 14 contained within a second on pace.

In race one Williams held off Beswick by 0.3261s, and reigning Queensland FFord champion Loiacono got another podium as Maynes-Rutty struggled to 13th.

He bounced back to finish third in race two, 0.8386s behind the winner Beswick who this time got the better of Williams by a tiny 0.0413s. Lobko also only beat Bussey to fourth by 0.147s. The weekend concluded with another Williams win, closing in on points leader Beswick who finished third behind Maynes-Rutty.

At Morgan Park Raceway the gaps between the top 14 in qualifying were very small again, and Loiacono edged Bussey to top spot by 0.09s. Lobko was a further 0.018s behind, with Beswick and Maynes-Rutty also within 0.2s of pole.

Loiacono pulled away to win race one by 3.487s, escaping the fighting behind. On the penultimate lap Bussey set a new lap record, but fell 0.042s short of beating Beswick to second. There was close action behind winner Loicacono in race two as well, and he lowered the lap record again. Beswick was second, Bussey pipped Lachlan Evenett to third and seven drivers beat the previous day’s new laptime benchmark.

Photo: Australian FFord

The pace was slower in race three, as Loiaconi completed the triple to leave the circuit third in the standings.

A Supercars Championship support slot at Symmons Plains Raceway was next up, and Williams denied Bussey pole by 0.0652s on the sub-minute lap. He could only convert that into a third place in race one, behind Bussey and Loiacono, and Beswick squeezed past Bussey to win race two as Williams rounded out the podium again.

There was drama in race three as both Loiacono and Williams retired, a third of the race ran behind the safety car, Beswick finished a distant 12th and Bussey led home Joe Fawcett for victory to overtake Loiaconi in the title fight.

The field combined with the Victorian FFord championship a week later at Sandown, and Sellars was the benchmark man after taking pole by 0.1323s over Beswick. He held on to win race one by 0.1318s, as Bussey set a new lap record down in 10th place, then had a marginally larger winning margin race two before beating Maynes-Rutty by a tiny 0.0524s in race three as a second covered the top six.

Beswick, in fifth, now had one hand on the title and headed to the Phillip Island finale – another Victorian FFord round – with no need to push hard. While he spent a weekend in the midfield, Loiacono claimed another pole and the wins went to Williams and Bussey, who ended the year as Beswick’s closest rivals in the points.

Williams led home Loiacono in race one, denied Maynes-Rutty by 0.0705s in a photo finish to race two, and Bussey took the final race to pip Beswick to the Victorian FFord title by two points. Richard Davison was champion of the state’s Kent class for a second successive year.

Beswick and John Pereira were NSW FFord’s Duratec and Kent class champions, and Tom Chapman comfortably took the Western Australian FFord title. In November the Australian FF1600 Nationals took place at Morgan Park, and the heats were Queensland FFord’s final races. Tim Hamilton and Loiacono had already been won the state’s Kent and Duratec titles.

Photo: Queensland FFord

Brock Brewer brilliantly drove his reprofiled Van Diemen RF93 chassis (in a funky livery) to pole by a sizeable 0.412s in qualifying, with Loiacono and Chapman in second and third. A second covered the top seven, and 2019 Australian FF1600 champion Tim Hamilton was a lonely eighth. The top two diced hard in a very hot heat one, which had an early safety car period, with Brewer “driving the car off the limits” to hold off Loiacono by 0.082s. Chapman was third, feeling like he was languishing against the top two and finishing just ahead of Todd Vince and Marc Redman who were split by 0.056s.

Chapman made tweaks to his car for heat two but again finished third, five seconds behind Vince who navigated his way past a spinner and an oil spill en route to victory in a Van Diemen RF94. Loiacono was second, and Brewer was isolated in fourth.

The next day it was Loiacono who was victorious in heat three, putting him on pole for the main race. He escaped the battle for second, which had four contenders. Chapman came home in second, ahead of Brewer, Vince and Redman.

The 15-lap race Australian FF1600 Nationals final started in chaotic fashion, with red flags waving on the opening lap after Brewer, AJ Gealy and Loiacono collided before turn one and retired. Chapman led the field on a safety car restart, then his main rival went off too and he romped away to win by 10s. Redman was second, and category rookie Matt Dicinoski was a very distant third as his poor launch actually helped him avoid the start chaos.

New Zealand

Blake Knowles won the national title in 2024, which Formula Scout reported on, and there was also championships for New Zealand’s two islands. In South Island FFord, there was a five-round schedule with three rounds taking place in 2023 and two last year. Ruapuna hosted round one, and Sebastian Manson took pole by just 0.089s over William Neale.

They were also close in race one, as Manson won by 0.198s. Dylan Petch was three seconds back, leading home Knowles.

Photo: Terry Marshal/Euan Cameron Photography

Neale had pole for race two, but Manson passed him on lap one to win again and Knowles overtook him too on the last lap to be second. Race three featured more drama at the front, with Manson and Neale trading the lead twice in the early laps before Neale got engaged in battle with Knowles. Neale then plummeted down the order and later retired, and Knowles was chasing Petch for second before he retired too. Petch got within 0.114s of winner Manson by race-end, and Caleb Byers was also within a second of victory.

Neale had an opportunity for redemption in the Wigram Cup, but Manson passed him on lap one and pulled away for his fourth win of the weekend. Petch beat Neale to second in a photo finish.

Manson’s winning form continued at Timaru, taking pole and leading lights-to-flag in races one and two but his combined winning margin over Neal coming to less than a second. He retired at the start of race three, which Neale won by just 0.033s over Petch as both passed Knowles on the final lap. The photo finish included the top five, who were split by 0.385s.

Small gaps were present again at Teretonga, as Manson claimed a third pole by 0.008s. Byers was second, and Izaak Fletcher was 0.157s off pole in third. That converted into 0.193s and 0.783s gaps in race one, although Fletcher then lost his podium to a 10s penalty for jumping the start. Manson raised his game in race two, setting a new lap record en route to a 6.407s win. Races three and four were similar, as Manson brought his victory tally up to 10 and Byers finished second twice.

The returns to Timaru and Ruapuna doubled up as New Zealand FFord’s first two rounds, and Manson won three races out of four at the former then at the latter they shared the wins again but collided. That had little impact on SI FFord’s title fight, with Manson crowned by 126 points. Byers was runner-up, 24 points ahead of Petch, and Fletcher was fourth.

North Island FF1600 also had a 2023-24 schedule, and the action began at Hampton Downs. Zach Blincoe was fastest in qualifying, but Dylan Grant was imperious in race one and also won race two. Blincoe finished a very distant fifth in race three as Grant won again by 9.418s over Blake Dowdall.

Photo: Geoff Ridder

Round two was at Taupo, and Manson pipped Grant to pole. Race one comfortably went Manson’s way, with Neale and Knowles filling the podium. It was the same order but even bigger gaps in race two, and that trend continued in race three.

A week later in December they were at Manfeild, and Grant still led the points. Knowles topped qualifying this time, narrowly beating Blincoe. They collided while disputing the race one lead and Blincoe retired, with Grant coming through from fifth to win. Race two was decided by 0.098s in Blincoe’s favour ahead of Knowles and Mason Potter as Grant retired, then rain hit the next day and Blincoe won again in a slippery race three. He was chased all the way by Grant, with Dowdall further back in third. Knowles passed the battling Blincoe and Neale to win race four, as fourth for Grant just kept him atop the standings.

There was a long break before round four at Hampton Downs in late March 2024, and Blincoe dominated a wet qualifying but left the circuit with only one podium. In race one Fletcher made his way into the lead before retiring, then Dowdall held off Blincoe by a miniscule 0.034s. Grant was 0.666s behind in third, and there was a big gap to Potter in fourth.

Potter held the lead longest in race two, but Manson was able to charge up from 10th to deny him victory by 0.12s. Dowdall made a last-lap pass to take third from Grant. Manson and Potter duelled again in race three until the former broke the tow and built a gap up front. Eighth place for Grant meant third-place finisher Dowdall took the championship lead by a point.

The next rounds at Manfeild and Taupo doubled up as the second half of NZ FFord’s season, with Manson and Potter taking two wins apiece at Manfeild. That put Potter in the NI FFord lead by five points over Grant, with Dowdall a further 30 behind.

Manson, aiming for the national title, took pole for the finale. Wet weather hit for race one, and Manson led home Grant. Neale and Knowles were further back in third and fourth, and Potter was seventh after he had a penalty removed. The sun was out for the title-deciding day, and Knowles claimed race two. Manson was second, surviving contact with Neale who bounced back to win the finale by 0.178s after another squabble with Manson. Knowles was third, and Grant was crowned NI FFord champion for a second successive season in fourth.

The post Revisiting the international Formula Ford action of 2024 appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photos: TGR NZ

FRegional was launched as a category in 2018, and its first-generation cars put on a show again this year

This year was due to be the last for Formula Regional as we know it before second-generation cars are introduced but, as Formula Scout was first to report, that plan was pushed back to 2026 with the approval of teams in various championships.

Currently Dome, Ligier and Tatuus supply chassis for the category, which is in its seventh year of competition, and Tatuus was the dominant brand on the market not only in how many of its cars are racing but also the fact that the base design for the T-318 has been modified for different series and for different engine suppliers. But in North America it’s Ligier that rules.

United States

FRegional Americas may have had three half-point races and an odd non-championship encounter in 2024, but the season did start with 15 cars. The only other times the championship has surpassed 14 cars on track were the first two rounds of 2020. Impressively a grid of 15 was also achieved for the season finale, although the top two in the standings were absent.

Crosslink/Kiwi Motorsport fielded nine of the entries in round one at NOLA Motorsports Park, and Patrick Woods-Toth comfortably claimed pole. His team-mate Ryan Shehan snuck to the inside of him at the start of race one, but Cole Kleck got even tighter to the inside and took third. By turn six he was in the lead.

Shehan was down to fourth when the pace car appeared on lap three, and after a second caution period the race was red flagged and restarted. DD Autosport’s Kleck won as the action died down entirely.

Race two turned up the chaos again, with the pace car needed on lap one. Crosslink/Kiwi’s Titus Sherlock led at that point, but after racing resumed he had two huge lock-ups and dropped to 11th before another caution period. Kleck was in front when red flags then waved, and a move by Velox USA’s Nicolas Ambiado on Kleck at turn two in the restarted race sent both deep and put Woods-Toth in the lead. Red flags waved again the lap after, and Woods-Toth was declared victor ahead of Kleck.

Photo: FR Americas

There was similar action in race three, and Shehan won by avoiding it all. Woods-Toth and Kleck completed the podium, albeit meeting the chequered flag behind the pace car.

The non-championship Laguna Seca event followed, and there were four drivers, two qualifying sessions but only one race due to worsening weather. That was race two, confusingly, meaning Crosslink/Kiwi’s Jett Bowling started on pole. However he immediately lost that advantage to Sherlock, who didn’t look back en route to victory.

That form continued into round two at Road America, where he took two wins and a second place. Woods-Toth topped qualifying and should’ve finished far ahead of Sherlock in race one if not for the pace car, and in race two there were mistakes by the pair and Shehan that led to an odd finishing order. Sherlock led home Shehan by eight seconds, and Woods-Toth was a lapped 12th. Race three, again, was similar. Sherlock won, Shehan had an off but finished second and took the points lead, and Woods-Toth was third before spinning out and causing a caution period that the race ended under.

A first ever visit to Indianapolis Motor Speedway was next up, and Woods-Toth pipped Shehan to pole on the circuit’s road course, and reclaimed the points lead by beating him to race one victory. The calmness disappeared for the other races, again.

In race two there was an early caution period, after which Sherlock took the lead as Shehan sent Woods-Toth into a half-spin. Shehan soon led, as Sherlock suddenly slowed then stopped with a race-ending problem. Bowling inherited second before another caution period, which eradicated the big gaps that had appeared. Nicola Havrda (another Crosslink/Kiwi driver) was third until the final lap when Ambiado passed her. He then spun, and his engine set on fire, so she returned to the podium. Shehan also returned to the points lead by winning, and Woods-Toth recovered to sixth and clinched race three pole by setting the fastest lap. He converted that into victory in a chaotic red-flagged encounter.

The bedlam started early at Mid-Ohio, as Sherlock had a brake failure in practice that led to a high-speed crash, a hopital trip and having to withdraw. Shehan made early moves in both of the event’s races to win twice.

Photo: FR Americas

Sherlock returned at New Jersey Motorsports Park, but the grid shank to nine cars. Woods-Toth had his own heavy crash before racing began, which led to his fastest qualifying lap being deleted. He still took race one pole, but once Sherlock got ahead of him early in the race he had enough in hand to keep the lead, and Ambiado took second on the last lap.

Ambiado dominated race two, then Woods-Toth soaked up pressure from him to win race three and reclaim the points lead as Shehan had already ended his campaign. His absence made Woods-Toth’s job considerably easier on home soil at Mosport, FRegional Americas’ first ever races in Canada, and a triple win delivered him the title.

That meant he could skip the finale at Circuit of the Americas, where Sherlock won from pole in race one and debuting USF Juniors graduates Bruno Ribeiro (IGY6) and Brady Golan (Toney Driver Development) evaded the usual chaos to finish one-two. Bowling retired and Sherlock was sixth, meaning both just missed out on demoting Shehan from second in the points.

Four of the series’ racers also appeared in FRegional Western, which never surpassed four cars. Crosslink/Kiwi’s Landan Matriano Lim, eighth in the FRegional Americas standings, took the title with eight wins from the nine races he started, with Bowling the only driver who was able to beat him and doing so at Thunderhill Raceway Park.

At Sonoma Raceway there was no Lim, and Jensen Global Advisors’s Jake Pollack appeared to beat World Speed Motorsports’ Jay Horak to victory in both races. Those were two of Horak’s six runner-up finishes, and he was third in every other race. Lim became champion with a race to spare so skipped the finale, which Atlantic Racing Team’s James Lawley won to come fourth in the standings behind fellow part-timer Larry Schnur (World Speed). The planned winter series didn’t go ahead.

Europe

Photo: Eurocup-3

Created last year as a series for drivers and teams from Spanish F4 to step up into, Eurocup-3 took the Tatuus’s T-318 and put a tuned-up engine in it as well adding a new Tatuus-designed bodykit to improve performance.

It began 2024 with a non-championship event at Motorland Aragon, and the pole positions went to Campos Racing’s Christian Ho and MP Motorsport’s Valerio Rinicella. It was windy in race one and Ho succumbed to pressure from MP’s Javier Sagrera and Rinicella. The latter passed his team-mate two laps from the end for the win.

Ho passed Rinicella straight away in race two, but once the pair started battling it brought Sagrera into play too and he managed to get past both. Rinicella got back ahead of him to lead, then second place went to Ho when Sagrera retired with a car issue. He was already far behind Rinicella though, so couldn’t stop him from winning.

That proved to be a pretty accurate preview of what was to come, as Ho and Sagrera fought for the title and ended the season just two points apart. What wasn’t representative was the utterly chaotic opening round at Spa-Francorchamps.

Live timing was not available, and heavy rain led to practice and qualifying being cancelled. Race one took place on a wet track, with the first three laps running behind the safety car and with MP’s pre-event testing pacesetter Owen Tangavelou on pole. Except he didn’t make it to the grid, so Sagrera led the field into green flag action. The safety car was back out by lap five, and conditions had worsended considerably when the next restart occurred on lap eight.

Sainteloc Racing’s Alexander Abkhazava tried passing Sagrera around the outside at Les Combes but ran out of room, cut the next corner and rejoined ahead. By slowing to let Sagrera back past he obstructed Palou Motorsport’s Kirill Smal, who then went off. Several drivers ran out of grip at the Bruxelles hairpin and went off, and the track became ever more treacherous.

Palou’s Luciano Morano crashed heading up Eau Rouge then was hit at high speed by Drivex School’s Gaspard Le Gallais, who had lost control of his car when he spun at Raidillon. A wheel was ripped off in the collision and it rolled further up the track. Red flags waved, and the race results were taken from the end of lap seven. That meant Sagrera won by 0.9s.

Photo: Eurocup-3

Race two didn’t go ahead, so an additional race was added to the Algarve round. The paddock headed to the Red Bull Ring first, and Tangavelou took a lights-to-flag win in race one. Ho took pole for race two but started slowly and MP’s Bruno del Pino got past him. He then managed the pace to win, as a track limits penalty dropped Ho behind Sagrera and Tangavelou.

Ho was finally able to turn a pole into a win in race one at Algarve, and in race two he had to pass pole-sitting team-mate Valentin Kluss then nail a safety car restart to take another victory. Tangavelou got through a messy race in fifth and with the points lead. Abkhazava, del Pino and Ho disputed the lead in race three, but Ho then retired his car and failed weaving by del Pino led to Abkhazava taking his first win ahead of Sagrera and Kluss.

At Paul Ricard the points lead went to Ho as he took two poles and converted them into a second place and a win. Once again a bad opening lap was his undoing in race one, with del Pino taking the lead and going on to win. Del Pino started race two from the pits and recovered to 10th.

After a run of three podiums in a row but no wins, Sagrera raised him game at Zandvoort by obliterating the opposition in qualifying and then winning twice. Safety car interruptions, red flags and rain made his race one success particularly difficult, then in race two he survived a clash with del Pino to beat him to victory and demote Ho to second in the standings.

Campos’s mid-season signing Jesse Carrasquedo Jr pipped Sagrera to race one pole at Aragon by 0.01 seconds. Sagrera was slow off the line, battling Tangavelou as Ho took second. Tangavelou found a gap between the pit wall and Sagrera approaching the first corner, but as they turned in contact was made that sent Sagrera spinning into retirement. Tangavelou later retired too. The safety car came out, and when racing resumed Carrasquedo resisted multiple attacks from Ho to win.

The retirees bounced back the next day, with Tangavelou taking pole and Sagrera winning race two. A formation lap crash delayed the start, and del Pino went side-by-side with Tangavelou through lap one. That went wrong when they tried to continue it into lap two, del Pino going off and Sagrera moving past into a lead he wouldn’t give up. Del Pino did boost his title hopes though, drawing level with Ho on points after he finished ninth.

Photo: Dutch Photo Agency

Ho reduced Sagrera’s lead by two points at Jerez, starting the weekend off by pipping del Pino and Sagrera to race one pole. Showing he was not under pressure, he then dominated the race as del Pino went points-free after stalling.

It was a different story the next day. Del Pino converted his first pole into a third win, Sagrera was second and Ho was fifth.

Seven guest drivers joined the grid for the Barcelona season finale, and outshining the title contenders at first was MP’s Emmo Fittipaldi. He took pole then fended off Ho in a dicey battle to win race one, with Drivex’s guesting Nikita Bedrin losing third to a penalty. Del Pino moved onto the podium, 11.5s behind the winner, and Sagrera got the points for fifth – the position Bedrin was classified in.

It was now a two-way fight, and Ho put in pole for the decider while Sagrera qualified fifth after Tangavelou was penalised. Ho did all he could up front, taking the point for fastest lap and distancing himself from Fittipaldi in second, and Bedrin was third. Global Racing Service’s Mari Boya, another guest driver, tried taking fifth from Sagrera but it meant little since he got the points for fourth place and with it the title.

The Ultimate Cup Series split its Formula Cup for FRegional cars into two classes this year as teams could choose whether to enter on 13 or 17-inch tyres. Initially the latter option was more popular, with seven of the nine drivers choosing the larger tyres for the season opener at Paul Ricard. But teenaged sophomore Marius Mezard (Sports Promotion) took pole by 1.879s on 13-inch rubber and converted it into a 10.968s victory over French Formula 4 graduate Enzo Richer (Formula Motorsport) in race one. Sportscar regular Milane Petelet (Krafft Racing) was just behind in third.

Mezard had an even bigger gap up front in race two, with Petelet far ahead of Richer in second and third, and it was a similar story in race three with Richer runner-up once more.

Photo: Alexandre Rodrigues

There were 14 entries for round two at Algarve, and all but three were now using 13-inch tyres. Adrien Closmenil, a rival of Richer in French F4 last year, beat him to pole by 0.371s and then drove his Winfield Racing School-supported car (with the company preparing to run its own cars in 2025) to race one victory by 7.903s as Richer had to work his way past Petelet for second after falling behind on lap one.

Richer took the lead on lap one of race two then profited from Mezard and Closmenil squabbling behind to have an assured drive to victory. Closmenil secured second place on the penultimate lap and was 0.237s behind Richer at the finish, but then got a 30s penalty which dropped him to 11th.

Race three was a thriller, with Closmenil, Mezard, Petelet, Richer and ArtLine Engineering’s Francisco Soldavini (who raced in FRegional Europe last year) fighting each other almost non-stop for the win. There were officially four different leaders, and Soldavini’s last-lap pass after going four-wide at turn five earned him victory. He beat Closmenil by 0.104s in a photo finish, and Richer was third.

The grid shrank to seven entries at Hockenheim, all on 13-inch tyres, and Soldavini claimed a double pole after going fastest by 0.805s over Richer. He maintained that pace advantage in race one, winning by 8.556s. Rain hit the next day, and the top two had to be careful throughout race two. In slippy conditions there was only two attempts at the lead by Richer, and Soldavini held on by 0.3s.

The track had dried in time for race three, but there was more drama as a mechanical problem forced Soldavini into retirement after a lap and Richer had a 30s penalty for crossing the pit exit line. He went on a charging drive and easily overcame his penalty as he was victorious by 17.675s over team-mate and gentleman driver Aubin Robert-Prince.

Photo: Davy Delien

Mugello also had no cars shod with 17-inch tyres competing, and the grid grew to 10 cars. Soldavini went off twice in qualifying, causing red flag interruptions, but still claimed another pole. A third of a second behind him in second place was Eurocup-3 star Abkhazava, driving for his family’s Artline team. Richer qualified third and held his position for five laps in race one before crashing out at turn five, leaving Abkhazava unchallenged in second.

Soldavini built a gap on lap one of race two to set up another win, as Richer held off the faster Abkhazava for second, and in race three Abkhazava had a go at his team-mate before settling in behind. Richer was a distant third, and left Mugello chasing rather than leading Soldavini in the title fight.

The pair had another new rival at Magny-Cours, as French F4 race-winner Dylan Estre stepped up to UCS to be team-mate to Richer. Soldavini was 0.4s up on both in qualifying, but on second-best laptimes he was behind Richer and Estre.

It got worse for him in race one as he stalled and immediately lost his pole advantage to Richer. He managed to get back ahead on lap two, only for Estre to misjudge an attempted pass on Richer and instead knock Soldavini out of the race as he locked up. Estre was handed a drive-through penalty but recovered to second as Richer had an easy route to victory.

Rain hit halfway through race two, and the safety car appeared once a backmarker crashed out. Soldavini used the opportunity to pit for grooved tyres, dropping from third to sixth by doing so, but the lack of green flag action after that meant he was locked into the position while Richer won again.

It was soaking wet for race three, and a Formula Renault 2.0 car driven by Nano Lopez took the overall win by 20s. Estre was the FRegional victor by 3.221s over Richer, who grew his points lead over Soldavini in third.

There were 15 cars for the Paul Ricard finale, and the returning Closmenil set the pole position time by 0.473s over Estre.

Photo: Davy Delien

Richer was almost a second off pole in third, but had the title all but secured as Soldavini was absent. He jumped up to second at the start of race one, but remained unable to match Closmenil’s pace as he pulled away for his second win. At least Richer knew he only needed half a point from the remaining two races to get the title in the bag.

Closmenil was set to win race two until a technical issue put him out with two laps to go, and Estre inherited victory by 1.01s. Richer was second, beating Lopez (now in a FRegional car) in a photo finish.

The champion started the final race from pole, but a car problem dropped him to third. Estre was again the chief beneficiary, but he was tracked down and passed by Closmenil who won by 1.105s.

Japan

Michael Sauter had two podium-free ADAC F4 seasons and came third in the 2023 F4 Central European Zone standings with his family’s team, so his switch to FRegional Japanese Championship late last year was a surprise in itself. But it was a place where podiums were likely given historically small grid sizes, and in the second of two outings he took a win and two poles. It turned out he could maintain that sort of form over a whole season in 2024, winning six races out of 14.

Boosting this year’s grid size was a new driver development programme set up by G Force Engineering, which put Sauter and Formula Ford star Sebastian Manson at the Birth Racing Project team and F4 race-winner Jesse Lacey at Bionic Jack Racing.

Sutekina Racing Team’s cameoing Jiei Okuzumi started the season on top by winning a slippy opening race at Suzuka as Manson and Sauter crashed out. Multiple formation laps and safety car errors were the big stories of the next two races, both won by Sauter. Fuma Horio replaced Okuzumi at Sportsland SUGO, and dominated his debut race. He passed Manson to win race two, as Sauter took the points lead.

Photo: FRJC

His gap at the top of the standings grew with two wins at Okayama, and it would’ve been three if not for a penalty in race two. He had jumped the start, but his pace advantage meant Lacey was the only driver to benefit from his 10s penalty.

Sauter did the double at Twin Ring Motegi, but only after Manson threw away race one victory at the final corner of race one. Horio crossed the line 0.187s behind Manson, then drove into the back of his car and flew over the top of it. Their destroyed chassis skated towards turn one before coming to a stop, and Manson was handed a one-lap penalty which dropped him to sixth. Race two was dominated by Sauter, and he now had one hand on the title with two rounds to go.

Horio was absent thereon, but Toyota entered its junior and F4 regular Yuki Sano at Fuji Speedway and he distracted from the title fight by winning all four of the races he contested and therefore coming fifth in the standings. Sauter meanwhile had a three-race podium-free run, with a crash and a clutch issue in the first Fuji round and then finishing fourth in race one of the season finale. In race two he was third, and Manson became championship runner-up by coming home eighth.

Middle East

FRegional Middle East actually only took place in the United Arab Emirates, and was used as a winter warm-up by drivers whose primary programmes for 2024 included Formula 2 and Formula 3. There were 35 drivers who took part over the five rounds, but only six race-winners.

PHM Racing’s F2-bound Taylor Barnard kicked things off on Yas Marina Circuit’s Corkscrew layout with a double pole, and he turned the first of those into a dominant win ahead of R-ace GP’s Tuukka Taponen and Martinius Stenshorne.

Red Bull junior Arvid Lindblad, driving one of Prema’s Mumbai Falcons-branded cars, won from reversed-grid pole in race two as Stenshorne took the points lead. He added to that by winning race three, but his move for the lead on Barnard was deemed to be illegal and a five-second penalty therefore handed victory and first place in the standings to Barnard.

Photo: FRME

Round two took place at the same track, but on the full layout, and Taponen beat Barnard to two poles in qualifying. However it was Stenshorne and Sainteloc Racing’s Theophile Nael he had to fight for race one victory, with three-wide and off-track moments before Taponen established himself in the lead and pulled away. Stenshorne reclaimed the points lead.

Nael was penalised for contact with Barnard (who was suffering from engine issues), which lifted him to third on race two’s grid. A strong start meant he led before turn one, and went on to win. Taponen led Nael in race three, and moved to the top of the points table as a result.

Dubai Autodrome hosted round three. Barnard beat Mumbai Falcons’ Rafael Camara to race one pole by 0.047s, and Camara edged Taponen and Barnard to race three pole by 0.01s and 0.074s respectively. Taponen was all over Barnard through the opening lap of race one, then settled for second behind him until lap 11 when he attacked again.

Barnard again kept him at bay, and soaked up the continuing pressure for his third win. MP’s Nikhil Bohra controlled race two, then Camara won race three but had to pass Taponen twice for it after falling behind on each of the first two laps. Brando Badoer beat team-mate Taylor Barnard to third after their own back-and-forth battle.

The paddock returned to Abu Dhabi for round four, although Stenshorne and Lindblad were no longer racing so it effectively became a two-way title fight. Both topped a qualifying session, and Barnard saw off engine concerns and then Taponen to win race one. Safety car periods filled the reversed-grid race, and the first undid del Pino’s early work to make a gap up front.

His front-right wheel then broke and he crashed out, leading to the safety car’s return and putting Camara in the lead. He went unchallenged at the next restart, then met the chequred flag behind the safety car as more drivers retired. Taponen finished fifth and grew his points lead as a penalty left Barnard in 14th.

Barnard’s weekend got even worse in race three, immediately losing ground and being unable to recover it. Although this time he finished fifth, Taponen’s drive from pole to victory meant the title was all but decided.

Photo: FRME

Qualifying at the Dubai finale only further cementedthat, as Taponen clinched two poles over Badoer and Barnard struggled to 12th in Q1 then was fifth in Q2. He recovered to eighth in race one, and Taponen cruised to a win that made him champion. Barnard repeated his 2023 placing of seond in the standings by winning race two. He was in fifth after an early safety car period, but after a later restart it became a six-way lead fight and he got the lead after Pinnacle Motorsport’s Boya went off.

The season ended with another controlling drive from Taponen, and Camara secured third in the standings by beating Barnard to eighth place in the race.

New Zealand

There was wet-weather action that helped spice up the FRegional Oceania action at the start of 2024, which pitted local talents against international names who were looking for a warm and dry way to begin their year.

Red flags meant the first qualifying session at Taupo switched from wet to dry, and F3 racer Christian Mansell set the pace. He lost the lead of race one at the start to Roman Bilinski though, and the M2 Competition driver flew away to win by a huge margin. Giles Motorsport driver Mansell responded by topping the next qualifying session, but before he could have another go at starting from pole there was the reversed-grid race. Giles’ Alex Crosbie led at first, but safety car interruptions left him susceptible to attacks at the end and M2’s Gerrard Xie and Bilinski drove by him.

An incident in that race meant Mansell didn’t start race three from pole, but he went from fifth to second on the opening lap, swept past M2’s Liam Sceats on lap four then led the way until Bilinski went by him a few laps from the end.

Bilinski bettered Mansell again in Q1 at Manfeild, and led lights-to-flag in race one. Mansell should’ve been second, but he stopped with an electrical problem and then had to climb back up to fifth from 10th place. That at least gave him a decent starting position for the wet reversed-grid race, which he won and Bilinski finished off the lead lap of due to a rain light issue.

In Q2 it was Bilinski though who had the edge on pace, and in a red-flagged race three which was shortened after being hit by intense rain he was victorious yet again. Mansell was again his closest rival, but left the championship after that.

Sceats now became Bilinski’s closest title rival, but at Hampton Downs both were off the pace in Q1 and Xie took pole on a damp track. Bilinski was 14th fastest, and Sceats was the only driver within a second of Xie so actually earned a front row spot.

The changing weather continued into race one, and Bilinski stormed through the order before a storm hit and red flags waved. Some drivers had opted for wet-weather tyres prior to that due to rain earlier in the day, but Bilinski and Sceats made the right choice on slicks and had gone side-by-side several times before the safety car and then the red flags ended their battle and decided the race in Bilinski’s favour.

Bilinski denied Xie another pole by 0.034s in Q2, and in race two Niko Lacorte led Michael Shin in an M2 one-two. Xie spent most of the race in a battle for third with Kiwi’s Woods-Toth, which eventually allowed Bilinski to go past both, and the race was ended early when Xie drove over the back of Woods-Toth and then into the barriers. He was classified fifth, behind Woods-Toth, and Sceats was sixth.

Xie had to miss race three, putting Giles’ Kaleb Ngatoa on the front row. He profited from Bilinski locking up to take the lead early on, then held off the points leader to win.

The margins in qualifying were close again in Q1 at Ruapuna, as Bilinski edged Sceats by 0.061s. After a lap one incident caused a lengthy red flag stoppage, Bilinski resisted race-long pressure from Sceats to win and Indy Nxt racer Jacob Abel finished third on his comeback to the championship.

There was another lap one clash in race two, between Shin and Woods-Toth, but both emerged unscathed. Shin won by a dominant 12.7s, and Woods-Toth held back Bilinski to be third. Bilinski claimed pole for race three, the Lady Wigram Trophy, but lost the lead to Sceats on lap one and couldn’t get it back. Abel was a distant third.

Photo: TGR NZ

The final round at Highlands Motorsport Park had an altered qualifying format, and a big title twist. Q1 set race one’s grid, then only the top 13 progressed to Q2. The top eight in that segment progressed to Q3, where it was decided who would start on pole for the season-ending New Zealand Grand Prix.

Bilinski was topping the times in Q1 before crashing out and putting his participation in race one – let alone the rest of qualifying – at risk. He progressed to Q2 due to his pace, but couldn’t take part, so lined up a penalised fourth for race one and 12th for the grand prix after Ngatoa withdrew. MTEC Motorsport’s cameoing Callum Hedge (the reigning FRegional Americas champion and FRegional Oceania runner-up) was fastest in Q2, and in Q3 it was initially Abel who was quickest before Sceats squeaked onto pole by 0.036s over Hedge.

A faultless drive from Sceats to win race one kept the title fight going, and Hedge defended perfectly to keep Bilinski in third. M2’s Bryce Aron led all the way in race two, although at one point he was under pressure from Bilinski. He had spent a long time to get past Woods-Toth, and his attempts to clear Aron led to him dropping back to third, where he remained to the finish. Regardless, the result won him the title.

The grand prix, won convincingly by Sceats, was clean until the race’s final corner. Aron hit the wall and Bilinski had no time to avoid, going into the back of him but still passing him for fifth. Crosbie met the chequered flag just 0.001s behind Aron.

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

Photo: Joe Skibinski

Becoming the first driver since 2007 to score more than 600 points in a year, Louis Foster’s charge to the 2024 Indy Nxt title was the kind of season that couldn’t be ignored and what he needed for an IndyCar chance

Through the first three Indy Nxt events of 2024, it looked like a title fight would play out between Abel Motorsports’ Jacob Abel and HMD Motorsports’ Nolan Siegel. The latter was the highest-placed returnee from 2023, when he won twice en route to third in the standings, while Abel had gone two seasons without winning but had finally clicked with Indy Nxt’s car.

Fast forward a further three events, and Andretti Global’s Louis Foster was 35 points clear at the top after taking pole, victory and leading every lap of both races in the Laguna Seca double-header and Siegel was no longer racing after signing a multi-year deal with McLaren to become one of its IndyCar drivers.

Despite Siegel’s departure, the title fight was still wide open. HMD’s Caio Collet had been on the podium four times and Andretti’s Jamie Chadwick had won at Road America as she continually improved in her sophomore campaign.

There was also another huge factor that was yet to come into consideration, and one that can do more for IndyCar ambitions than season-long brilliance: oval pace.

After Laguna Seca, there were two more road courses on the schedule but four ovals. That was twice as many as 2023, with Abel and Foster finishing second at Iowa Speedway and Gateway respectively that year. Like the rest of the field, both were new to the Milwaukee Mile and Nashville Superspeedway.

The last time Indy Nxt had three oval races was 2018, a number it had maintained after dropping down from five in 2013.

Qualifying on an oval with a two-lap average speed of 170mph (as was the case at Iowa) is hard enough, but running at a similar pace for lap after lap while sharing the track with everyone else is a different level of pressure and tiny mistakes on ovals have big consequences.

Absolute pace

Pos.	Driver	Pace	Pos.	Driver	Pace	Pos.	Driver	Pace
1	Foster	100.242%	9	Brooks	101.193%	18	Browne	101.751%
2	Abel	100.465%	10	Hedge	101.241%	N/A	Porto	101.785%
3	Collet	100.627%	11	de Alba	101.245$	19	Missig	101.907%
4	d’Orlando	100.664%	12	Sundaramoorthy	101.337%	20	Allaer	101.972%
5	Siegel	100.752%	13	Mason	101.343%	21	Miller	102.385%
6	Chadwick	100.786%	14	Rowe	101.444%	22	Escotto	102.649%
7	Roe	100.907%	15	Gold	101.547%	23	Koolen	102.658%
N/A	Jones	100.913%	16	Bogle	101.595%	24	Brewer	104.570%
8	Aron	101.058%	17	Pierson	101.612%	25	Ferns	109.600%

Driver did less than three rounds. No average when only one event attended

Foster was frank that his approach was to nullify those factors mentally, and romped to the title by winning all four oval races.

“I am quite thoughtful in things I do. I think a lot about things I say and do and how I act both on and off the track,” he said.

“People say they perform better under pressure; I disagree completely. I don’t think anyone does. I think if you could take pressure off, you’ll perform better. So that’s my way of going about things. I try and take pressure off in situations, look at big pictures and kind of spell it out for myself in a way. To compute information better. To get it all clear in my head. Of what I need to do and the situation that I have, and how to deal with that.

“So pressure-wise, for me it’s keeping [it] off of myself as much as possible. Because I think you perform better when you’re less stressed. Because no one likes being stressed.”

His team-mate James Roe Jr beat to him pole at Iowa by 0.0054 seconds, but Foster passted him for the lead with six laps to go for victory after focusing on tyre management from the very start of the race while sitting in his mirrors. There had been extreme concern about tyre durability after drivers suffered from blistering in practice, and the race length was shortened from 75 to 55 laps.

The pace car’s two interventions in the race helped alleviate the issue further, but denied Roe a shot at victory as yellow flags waved shortly after Foster’s pass. There were two other gifts for the points leader, as Collet caused the first caution period by spinning out early, and Abel retired mid-race with a slashed rear-right tyre.

Oval pace

Pos.	Driver	Pace	Pos.	Driver	Pace
1	Foster	100.058%	11	Sundaramoorthy	101.519%
2	Chadwick	100.423%	12	Rowe	102.163%
N/A	d’Orlando	100.611%	13	Pierson	102.357%
3	Abel	100.627%	N/A	Escotto	102.672%
4	Collet	100.975%	14	Browne	102.815%
5	Hedge	101.043%	15	Miller	102.999%
6	Roe	101.069%	N/A	Koolen	103.012%
7	Aron	101.116%	N/A	Allaer	103.263%
8	Brooks	101.187%	N/A	Missig	103.279%
9	de Alba	101.228%	16	Gold	103.378%
10	Bogle	101.379%	17	Ferns	109.600%

Driver did less than three rounds. No average when only one event attended

If Laguna Seca hadn’t been the turning point of the season, then that race certainly was as Foster led lights-to-flag in the next three oval races. Combined with Iowa that came to 236 laps in front, with Roe leading for 49.

On the road and street courses, Foster took wins on Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the streets of Detroit to accompany his Laguna Seca double, was second at three other venues and only off the podium at Barber Motorsports Park and in race one of two at IMS (when he finished a season-low seventh).

Abel and the HMD trio of Callum Hedge, Christian Bogle and Jonathan Browne were also classified as finishers of every race, but Abel came home outside of the top 10 twice and the HMD drivers never even led a lap. Hedge did come fourth in the standings through his consistency, but only made the podium in Detroit.

Foster also led 126 laps away from the ovals, bettering Abel’s 105, while Collet spent 59 laps in front (leading early on in IMS race two then taking with a lights-to-flag win at Mid-Ohio), Siegel led from start-to-finish in the 45-lap St. Petersburg season opener and Chadwick’s Road America win came by navigating various challenges to stay at the front for all 20 laps.

If you take away laps spent behind the pace car, then Foster still led over 200 laps of green flag action on ovals and over 100 elsewhere, the kind of form that put him in contention for an IndyCar seat as much as the $850,000 prize he had for becoming champion and could spend on IndyCar testing and entries into the Indianapolis 500 and one other event in 2025.

Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing signed Foster not only for next season but on a multi-year contract, and before he had even tested their car, while Abel is relying on impressing teams up close in the cockpit in his attempt to secure an IndyCar graduation as his impressive 2024 existed firmly in the shadow of Foster’s sublime one.

USFP2000 has top title fight, but where are next Indy Nxt stars?

Photo: Gavin Baker Photography

Lochie Hughes would likely have been USF2000 runner-up as a rookie in 2023 if not for a disastrous weekend at Mid-Ohio, and having proven himself at that level he stepped up to USF Pro 2000 for this year and won on debut.

But the Turn 3 Motorsport driver then sank to sixth in the standings while Velocity Racing Development’s Nikita Johnson surged ahead. He had five races of experience from 2023, winning two of them, and he was victorious in four of the first six races of this season. That run was ended when he was disqualified from victory in race two on IMS’s road course due to having a modified component on his car, not just losing the 30 points for winning but being docked 30 points too.

His lead went from 55 to 15 points, with TJ Speed’s Hunter Yeany his closest rival. Johnson was then handed a gift as Yeany had run out of budget and promptly dropped off the grid, so he instead had a 22-point margin over Hughes who after a single top-10 finish at the NOLA Motorsports Park triple-header had been on the podium in all three races at IMS.

The momentum was swinging back into Hughes’ favour, and next up was the year’s sole oval race which awarded significantly more points to the top 16 than any other contest. Hughes finished the Freedom 90 at Indianapolis Raceway Park in third, Exclusive Autosport’s Braden Eves won and Johnson was classified 17th after crashing out. Now 24 points split the top four.

Johnson led by a point over Hughes, who two weeks later at Road America won all three races as Johnson lacked pace. He started outside of the top 10 twice, but his recovery drives were not enough to prevent Hughes romping into a 50-point lead.

He responded at Mid-Ohio with victory in both races, and as Hughes finished fourth and seventh the gap closed back down to 26 points with two rounds to go and with Pabst Racing’s win-free Jace Denmark a further six behind.

The top two were split by 0.0905s in Toronto practice, but the gap grew to 0.459s in the first qualifying session with Hughes in second and Johnson eighth. They returned to the top in Q2, split by 0.1114s and with Denmark 0.0767s behind Johnson.

Average start and finish positions

Rank	Driver	Start	Rank	Driver	Finish
1	Hughes	4.22	1	Hughes	4.94
2	Johnson	4.72	N/A	Aron	5.00
3	Denmark	5.33	2	Denmark	5.56
4	Yeany	5.60	3	Yeany	5.75
5	Sikes	6.00	4	Johnson	6.00
N/A	Aron	6.00	5	Brooks	6.65
6	Brooks	6.36	6	Sikes	8.61
7	Sceats	7.61	7	Sceats	8.89
8	Clark	7.81	8	van Berlo	9.00
9	van Berlo	8.00	9	Dyszelski	9.67
10	Dyszelski	9.00	10	Mossman	9.78

Driver did less than three rounds. No average when only one event attended

Johnson ploughed into the back of TJ Speed’s Liam Sceats at the opening corner of race one, and Hughes pitted at the end of lap one but charged back up to fifth from 14th. Simon Sikes took victory over team-mate Denmark, who cut Hughes’ lead by two points. Hughes led lights-to-flag in race two, and Denmark passed Johnson early before they swapped places again.

After a lengthy period sat in Hughes’ mirrors, Johnson had his first go at taking the lead undone by yellow flags. When pressuring again a few laps later a spin turned into a race-ending crash, and Denmark lost second to Sceats late on but retained his status as effectively Hughes’ only title rival as Johnson only just remained in contention.

Taking pole for both races of the Portland finale kept Johnson’s title hopes alive, and he held off a charging Sikes to win a wet race one. But Hughes’s run to sixth was enough to crown him champion as a spin, puncture and pitstop left Denmark in 14th.

Another lights-to-flag win for Johnson in race two ahead of Hughes, Sikes and Denmark meant he snatched back the championship runner-up spot and ended the season 40 points behind. Had VRD provided him with a legal car in race two at IMS, then finishing 10th that day would’ve been enough to claim title honours come season-end.

Hughes still step up to Indy Nxt with Andretti in 2025, Johnson will look beyond VRD and America by racing in Formula Regional Oceania and GB3, and Denmark’s plans are undecided (but he’s unlikely to spend a third year in USFP2000).

Ricardo Escotto will solely focus on Indy Nxt after competing there part-time this year alongside coming ninth in USFP2000, and at the time of writing the highest-placed driver confirmed to be continuing on the third rung of the USA’s single-seater ladder is Alessandro de Tullio who did the last three rounds of the 2024 USFP2000 season and came 20th in the standings.

Pabst’s Christian Brooks skipped the last two rounds after also stepping up to Indy Nxt mid-season, but has no 2025 seat at present, while Bryce Aron stepped down to USFP2000 for the Freedom 90 to get some oval experience.

It’s a big contrast to last year, when the top four in the points and seven others graduated to Indy Nxt in some capacity for 2024.

The post The ferocious Indy Nxt form from Foster that IndyCar couldn’t ignore appeared first on Formula Scout.