Photo: ACI Sport

Reno Francot will make his Formula Regional Middle East this weekend at Dubai Autodrome with CL Motorsport.

After Michael Belov departed its line-up following a horror shunt in race three of the campaign, CL has signed Reno Francot to fill its third car for the remaining two rounds at Dubai and Losail.

The 18-year-old Dutchman was 2023 F4 Central European Zone runner-up, 10th in the United Arab Emirates-based Formula Trophy series in 2024, then third in E4 and fifth in F4 Middle East last year. He also made a FRegional cameo in the European championship.

MP Motorsport has also revised its line-up. Christian Ho’s two-round deal has concluded, and he sits seventh in the standings with one win and one other podium at the season’s halfway point. He is replaced this weekend by Jesse Carrasquedo Jr, who will be driving for Van Amersfoort Racing in the FIA Formula 3 Championship later this year.

The 18-year-old Mexican has been racing at the FRegional level since 2023. He has no points from 12 FREC starts, one podium from 23 races in FRME and has had far more success from his 30 races in Eurocup-3. He won as a part-timer in 2024, and was fifth in the 2025 standings with two victories. He was also eighth in its winter series.

Carrasquedo, Francot and R-ace GP’s debutant Emanuele Olivieri got some crucial running at Dubai in FRME’s pre-event test sessions on Thursday and Friday.

Trident’s Maximilian Popov was fastest, setting a 1m53.523s in session two to lead Mumbai Falcons duo Sebastian Wheldon and Kean Nakamura-Berta by 0.051 and 0.094 seconds respectively. Taito Kato (ART Grand Prix), Alex Ninovic (Rodin Motorsport) and Alexander Abkhazava (MP) were also within 0.2s of Popov, and a second covered the top 23 drivers in the expanded 32-car field.

R-ace’s points leader Rashid Al Dhaheri was 0.384s off the pace in eighth place, and fell down to last in the one-hour free practice session on Friday afternoon.

Setting the pace were G4 Racing’s Andrea Dupe and Jules Roussel, after being 22nd and 14th in testing, with the former posting a 1m54.270s late on to claim top spot by 0.026s.

Olivieri trailed by 0.159s in third place, and just 0.026s ahead of Nakamura-Berta whose personal best came before his final set of laps. Artem Severiukhin made it three G4 drivers in the top five, and also in a top eight split by 0.277s were Reza Seewooruthun (Rodin), title contender Alex Powell (Pinnacle Motorsport) and Giovanni Maschio (Race Performance Motorsport).

There were 25 drivers within a second of Dupe, while Al Dhaheri only set eight laps in total (the second least in the field) and was 2.127s off the pace.

Free practice results

The post Francot joins FRegional Middle East field, G4 Racing 1-2 in practice appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: F4 ME

G4 Racing and Pinnacle Motorsport have each announced a fleet of drivers for the upcoming Formula Regional Middle East season.

The star name among the two line-ups is Alex Powell, who will be racing for Pinnacle and has recently dropped off the Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 team’s junior driver roster.

Now 18 years old, the Miami-born Jamaican had been a Mercedes junior since 2019 when he was in mini karting. He concluded his karting career in 2023 with the Champions of the Future title and third in the CIK-FIA European championship on OK class karts, and the runner-up spot in the FIA World Cup for KZ2 shifter karts.

At the end of that year he joined Prema in Formula 4, an alliance that led to coming fifth in Italian F4 and winning races in E4 and F4 United Arab Emirates. For 2025 he switched to R-ace GP, and was F4 Middle East runner-up before E4 and Italian F4 campaigns that led to further race wins. He also reunited with Prema for a FRegional European Championship cameo.

In FRME he will be team-mate to 16-year-old Emirati-Swedish racer August Raber. He came 21st in British F4 then 11th in Formula Trophy as a single-seater rookie in 2024, then was a race-winning seventh in British F4 and eighth in F4 Middle East last year as well as getting FRegional-level experience by doing two rounds in GB3.

Over at G4, the team’s former karting protege Andrea Dupe, Jules Roussel and Artem Severiukhin have been signed.

Dupe raced for three teams last year, starting off his car racing career with AS Motorsport. He came 17th in Formula Winter Series with the team, then joined PHM Racing in Italian F4 before switching to Prema mid-campaign. That also led to the 17-year-old Frenchman doing two E4 rounds in the latter’s line-up, and he was outside of the top 20 in the standings of both championship.

Roussel, also French but two years older, graduates to FRegional after two seasons in the centrally-run French F4 championship. He won two races as a sophomore, putting him third in the points, and capped off 2025 by winning the centrally-run FIA F4 World Cup in Macau.

Severiukhin hails from Russia, and the 18-year-old steps up to FRME with one year of F4 experience. He came 10th in the FWinter Series and 13th in Italian F4 with Jenzer Motorsport, and made a Spanish F4 cameo with Drivex School.

The post Alex Powell headed to FRME as G4 Racing and Pinnacle grow line-ups appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: F4 Spain

The grid is growing for Spanish Formula 4’s main and winter championships, the latter of which starts next month.

G4 Racing has announced the Karras brothers, Jean Paul and Philippe Armand, will be in its line-up for both seasons after running the pair in 2025.

They started their single-seater careers in F4 Central European Zone two years ago, with two fourth places putting Philippe Armand 16th in the standings. He then represented Greece in the Motorsport Games’ F4 event, qualifying seventh, finishing 12th in the qualification race then retiring from the main race.

Sainteloc Racing signed the brothers for the 2025 Spanish F4 Winter Championship, in which both failed to score. They continued with Sainteloc for round one of the main championship, then did the last three rounds with G4. Jean Paul was the lead brother in the standings after both finished a race in the top 10 at the last round.

TC Racing, the F4 team founded by Real Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois that is now active in karting too with its TC Junior Team, will run Beau Lowette in the two Spanish F4 championships.

The 16-year-old Belgian is a single-seater rookie who has raced in European karting over the last three years. He was Rotax Max Challenge Grand Finals runner-up in the Rotax Junior class in 2023, and has been in senior classes since.

In Rotax Senior he was 2024 RMC Winter Cup runner-up and 13th in Belgium’s BNL Series, and on OK karts was 13th in WSK’s Euro Series, 27th in its Final Cup and 31st in the CIK-FIA European Championship.

Completing an F4 paddock switch for 2026 is Pablo Riccobono Bello, who came 16th in the centrally-run French F4 last year and will do a double Spanish F4 programme with Global Racing Service. He joined the team ahead of the main championship’s 2025 season finale.

Racing in Spanish F4, but yet to be confirmed for the winter championship grid, are Jorge Bruno and Max Radeck at Drivex School. The team now has six drivers, with at least three to be entered under the ‘DX Racing Team’ banner.

Bruno is already a race-winner in single-seaters, having spent 2025 in Formula 2 Argentina (a relaunched entry-level series for halo-shod cars previously known as Argentinian Formula Renault 2.0 and then Formula Nacional Argentina). As a part-timer he took a victory and two other podiums en route to 10th in the standings.

Radeck is from Portugal and has primarily competed in his home country’s karting scene.

Monlau Motorsport also has two drivers signed for Spanish F4 later in the year: Rahim Alibhai and Miki Blascos.

American racer Alibhai came 22nd in a part-time USF Juniors campaign last year, finishing eighth on his debut, and the 15-year-old is a member of Fernando Alonso’s A14 Management scheme.

Blascos did three Spanish F4 rounds in 2025 with Monlau and was 24th in the standings.

The post Grid grows for 2026 Spanish F4 Winter Championship appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: ACI Sport

While the Formula Regional European Championship’s 2026 calendar is not yet published, recent paddock gossip has revealed what changes are expected.

Delays in formalising the agreement between FREC promoter ACI Sport and the FIA to collaborate on organising the championship going forward has subsequently prolonged negotiations with circuits but teams have already received an eight-round draft calendar.

That would end a five-year run of 10-round seasons, and Formula Scout understands nations are now limited to two rounds per year. ACI operates from Italy, which has appeared at least three times on the calendar in all previous seasons.

The draft calendar retains Monza but drops Imola and Misano for Mugello, which had featured each year until 2025.

Hockenheim, Paul Ricard, the Red Bull Ring, Spa-Francorchamps and Zandvoort will be retained, and it is believed Barcelona will be off the calendar for the first time as FREC was unable to secure a suitable slot to race there.

The Hungaroring is likely to be absent as GB3 retains its position supporting Euroformula’s event there, while Germany could have two rounds as the Nurburgring is touted to join. It and Hockenheim’s round are expected to support the DTM.

In 2021, FREC planned to visit the Nurburgring but severe flooding in the Eifel region made the track unavailable and it was swapped out for Valencia’s Ricardo Tormo circuit. It would therefore debut next year.

FREC has long sought a return to Formula 1’s support bill, having started its 2021 season with three rounds on its undercard and racing in Monaco again in 2022. Championship partner Renault then had to cede that support slot to FIA Formula 3.

While being in F1’s 2026 support paddock appears unattainable, FREC’s increased support from the FIA is likely to add pressure to achieve its ambition.

Despite a reduced calendar length, FREC will continue to have a 20-race season. Four rounds will feature a third race, which will be the first reversed-grid encounters in championship history.

The top 12 from the first qualifying session will be reversed to form the grid, with the aim of helping drivers adjust to the format used further up the ladder in FIA F3.

Formula Scout understands qualifying would likely be shifted to Friday afternoons, at least for the triple-headers.

A joint announcement by FREC and the FIA before this season’s penultimate round at Hockenheim named the 10 teams that will compete in 2026. That had one notable change from a draft list circulated to teams, as Michael Meadows’ Argenti Motorsport outfit had been set to join and replace G4 Racing.

Argenti competes primarily in karting and British Formula 4, and expanded into GB3 this year in partnership with Prema.

G4 has raced in FREC since 2021, won five races but endured a tough 2025 in which it scored one point. Team manager Adrian Munoz explained that they and rivals were surprised by their initial omission, and were informed of the changed decision days before the announcement. G4 then submitted its 2026 entry fees immediately.

The post FREC set to introduce reversed-grid races in 2026 and add new circuit appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Niels Broekema

Spain-based Swiss team G4 Racing has announced it is returning to the Spanish Formula 4 championship after an absence of five seasons.

It will join the grid for the final three rounds of the 2025 campaign at Jerez, Valencia’s Ricardo Tormo circuit and Barcelona.

Driving its two cars will be Greek twins Philippe Armand Karras and Jean-Paul Karras, who were in Sainteloc Racing’s line-up earlier this year. They came 24th and 32nd in the winter championship and contested the opening round of the main series.

The pair spent their karting careers in France and cameoed in F4 Central European Zone last year. Philippe Armand also represented Greece in the Motorsport Games’ F4 event.

G4 was established by Patrick Gnos to run his son Axel through his junior racing career. It started off in karting, then moved into single-seaters in 2019 via Spanish F4. The younger Gnos came sixth in the standings with two podiums.

They headed to Italian F4 in 2020, where Gnos ended up 23rd in the points table, then took over Bhaitech’s three-car Formula Regional European Championship entry ahead of the 2021 season.

Michael Belov won two races for the team that year, then G4 went points-free in 2022 which was Gnos’s last year in its line-up. It bounced back in 2023 with three victories courtesy of Alessandro Giusti, then a single podium was the highlight of 2024. With three rounds remaining, it is currently points-free again this year.

“We are back! We left F4 a few years ago to focus on FREC. Today, G4 Racing is coming back where it all started, and we are looking forward to participating in this important and successful championship,” said team principal Patrick Gnos.

“We have been very well welcomed by the organizing team and are thankful for their support.”

The post G4 Racing returns to Spanish F4 after five-season absence appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: F4 ME

Enzo Deligny topped Formula Regional European Championship’s pre-event test session at the Red Bull Ring, ahead of a round in which four drivers will debut.

Akcel GP will be absent from the grid, with the team concluding its time in FREC this year after doing half of the rounds.

Its regular driver Saqer Al Maosherji will remain in the paddock though by switching to G4 Racing for the rest of the season.

The Kuwaiti driver is currently 30th in the championship, with two 19th places his best race results.

CL Motorsport is expanding to three cars this weekend, after initially looking like it would only have one entry. Zachary David has a clashing racing commitment Super Formula Lights, so Newman Chi has been signed to substitute for him in the #9 car, while fellow Formula 4 graduate Enea Frey completes CL’s line-up.

Chi and Frey sit seventh and 19th in the Italian F4 standings at present with Prema and Jenzer Motorsport respectively, and in E4 Frey is 10th and Chi is 11th after round one.

Frey started 2025 by coming ninth in Formula Winter Series, while Chi was ninth in F4 Middle East. His team-mate Alex Powell was championship runner-up, and is currently fourth in Italian F4.

Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 junior Powell will be sticking with Prema as he also makes his FREC debut in Austria in the car previously raced by Doriane Pin.

The final change is at Race Performance Motorsport, where Reno Francot is replacing Enzo Yeh. No explanation has been given for Yeh’s absence.

Francot is currently third in E4, sixth in Spanish F4 and 12th in Italian F4, and earlier this year came fifth in F4 Middle East and 12th in the Spanish F4 Winter Championship.

FREC’s Thursday afternoon test session at the Red Bull Ring ran for three hours, and Chi initially set the pace. He traded top spot with Frey too before R-ace GP’s Deligny posted a 1m28.451s to go fastest.

Frey beat that by 0.245 seconds, then Trident’s Nandhavud Bhirmobhakdi and Matteo De Palo were next to lower the pace.

Deligny responded by breaking into the 1m27s, which Prema’s Freddie Slater and De Palo then also managed to do. Top spot returned to Deligny by 0.027s a few laps later, then Francot beat him by just 0.006s.

His 1m27.616s lap stood as the benchmark for 22 minutes, eventually being beaten by Slater. He improved on his next two laps after that to lower the pace to 1m26.755s, then made another gain of 0.129s three laps later.

Slater headed back out at the end of the second hour for some flying laps and improved by further 0.033s. He continued to be the fastest driver for another 25 minutes, and it took a 1m26.446s from Deligny to usurp him.

With less than 14 minutes to go, Slater got within 0.024s of Deligny, and a few minutes after that Van Amersfoort Racing’s Pedro Clerot lapped 0.103s shy of Deligny’s pace. A second covered the top 19.

Test results

The post Deligny tops Red Bull Ring testing as four debutants join FREC field appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: ACI Sport

Prema’s Freddie Slater set the pace in Formula Regional European Championship pre-event testing at Imola on Firday, which marked the paddock return of Kacper Sztuka.

The teenaged Pole is driving for G4 Racing, and will be replacing Arthur Aegerter in its line-up. He previously drove for the team in the season opener, and his main programme this year has been the FRegional-based Eurocup-3 with Campos Racing.

He is fourth in the standings there with one win and four other podiums from the season’s first half.

Also returning to the FREC grid this weekend is PHM Racing-supported Akcel GP team, which missed the previous round at Paul Ricard two weeks ago.

The first test session at Imola did not reach its planned run time of nearly two hours due to four red flag periods, but during the green flag action there were still 11 different drivers who topped the times.

Race Performance Motorsport’s Ean Eyckmans posted the first representative laptime of the day, a 1n42.560s, with Trident’s Ruiqi Liu and Matteo De Palo lowering the pace in the minutes after he set that.

De Palo was first into the 1m41s, then Prema’s Rashid Al Dhaheri usurped him with two 1m41.7s laps. Slater beat him by 0.034s, then Van Amersfoort Racing’s Dion Gowda lowered the pace twice marginally before a red flag stoppage.

His 1m41.593s was eventually beaten, but only just, by his team-mates. Hiyu Yamakoshi went quickest by 0.028s, then Pedro Clerot was a further 0.033s quicker.

Al Dhaheri was in his slipstream and set a 1m40.843s, then with an hour to go R-ace GP’s Akshay Bohra recorded a 1m40.704s that would not be beaten.

The VAR trio were the fastest drivers at first in session two, then ART Grand Prix’s Evan Giltaire broke into the 1m41s. He was edged by team-mate Kanato Le and Slater in the next minute, then ART GP’s Taito Kato moved ahead.

Sainteloc Racing’s Nikita Bedrin was first into the 1m40s, but the battle for first place was soon between Slater and Giltaire again. The latter brought the pace down to 1m40.309s before Clerot set three new benchmarks, then team-mate Jin Nakamura went fastest by 0.025s.

Over 70 minutes remained, but fewer drivers improved after that. One driver who was able to set personal bests on later runs was Slater, who improved upon the test’s fastest lap three times to end the day with a 0.399s advantage over Clerot and 0.454s to Al Dhaheri.

Test results

The post Slater sets test pace as Sztuka returns to FREC field at Imola appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Davy Delien

There are four late additions to the entry list for this weekend’s Formula Regional European Championship round at the Hungaroring.

The first of those is Zachary David at CL Motorsport, although it is only confirmation of his presence on track that has come late since he signed to race with CL Motorsport last year but then did not appear on the grid in any of the first three rounds.

So far in 2025 the 17-year-old has instead racing one step up the single-seater ladder in Japan’s Super Formula Lights series. Halfway through the season he sits fifth in the standings with one podium, and in 2024 he came fourth in FRegional Middle East and 14th in FREC with R-ace GP.

Also returning to FREC are Javier Sagrera and Maya Weug, with the PHM Racing-supported Akcel GP team and Sainteloc Racing respectively.

Sagrera began 2025 in the FIA Formula 3 Championship with AIX Racing, but only did two rounds. The 21-year-old Spaniard did two FREC rounds with MP Motorsport in 2023, then was runner-up in the FRegional-based Eurocup-3 championship with the team last year. He lost the title in controversial circumstances settled post-season.

Weug has previously driven for KIC Motorsport in FREC, coming 17th in the 2023 standings then making a 2024 cameo. Her focus since then has been in Formula 4 where she races in the all-female F1 Academy series. She came third last year, and sits third in the 2025 title race too.

The fourth addition to the grid is Enzo Richer, who will join G4 Racing’s line-up. The 19-year-old started off in French F4, racing part-time in 2021 coming 17th in the points table the next year then improving to eighth in the standings in 2023.

He became a FRegional champion last year by racing in the Ultimate Cup Series’ Formula Cup, and also stepped up to F3-level machinery for a cameo in his home Euroformula round at Paul Ricard.

The post Returning faces among late additions to FREC’s Hungaroring grid appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: ACI Sport

G4 Racing has announced that Edu Robinson will join its Formula Regional European Championship line-up for the remainder of the season.

Only three out of this year’s 10 rounds have already taken place, meaning Robinson will do 14 races as team-mate to Edouard Borgna and Arthur Aegerter.

The car that Robinson will race in was driven by Kacper Sztuka in the season opener, and has been vacant the last two rounds.

“I would like to thank G4 for giving me this great opportunity to step up to FREC,” said Robinson. “I cannot wait to start working with them next week at Hungaroring and developing as a driver for the rest of the season with them.”

The British-Spaniard is in his second year of single-seater racing, and has one weekend of FRegional-level experience having contested Eurocup-3’s round at Algarve earlier this month.

He raced in Italian Formula 4 and E4 (nee Euro 4) last year, initially driving for AS Motorsport and then switching to US Racing. Robinson scored once in both series, and remained with US for the 2025 Formula Winter Series in Iberia.

A pole position and two podiums in the opening round were a major improvement on his 2024 results, but he only did a half-season and ended up 11th in the standings. He then joined Drivex School for the Spanish F4 season opener.

“We are very happy to welcome Edu to our team. A former driver of our karting team ‘Kids to Win’, he has been developing in F4 over the past years, and now it’s time for him to take the next step into FREC,” said G4’s sporting and technical manager Adrian Munoz.

The post Edu Robinson joins G4 Racing in FRegional Europe for rest of season appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: FRECA

ART Grand Prix’s Evan Giltaire led the way on Formula Regional European Championship’s second pre-season test day at Barcelona.

He topped the morning session, in which everyone set their best laps of the day. Giltaire’s 1m35.424s benchmark was posted on his 16th lap. He would do a further 35 before the chequered flag waved, a tally that nobody else reached.

Van Amersfoort Racing’s Pedro Clerot got closest to his pace, being 0.182 seconds off and posting his personal best with over half an hour of the session left. At that point nine drivers on track, including the top two, and following that there were no changes to the order. Everyone was in the pits when the session ended.

Prema’s Freddie Slater was third, 0.01s off Clerot, and VAR’s Hiyu Yamakoshi was a further 0.011s behind.

R-ace GP’s Enzo Deligny completed a top five covered by 0.3s, and 16 drivers were within a second of Giltaire’s pace. There was one red flag period, caused by ART GP’s Kanato Le getting beached in the gravel at turn two.

At the bottom of the order were Sainteloc Racing’s Yaroslav Veselaho and G4 Racing’s Edouard Borgna, some way off everyone else.

G4’s only signing at present is Borgna, who was announced at the end of March. The 20-year-old Frenchman steps up to FRegional after two years in Formula 4.

As a rookie in French F4 he came last in the championship, then in his sophomore campaign scored one point to improve to 19th in the table. He also contested the Formula Winter Series with Jenzer Motorsport in 2024, and was a points-free 43rd in the standings.

Veselaho emerged as the driver to beat early in the afternoon session, setting a 1m37.948s while alone on track. With two-and-a-half hours left, only four others had recorded laptimes and Veselaho had already put down a laptime he would be unable to improve on.

A few minutes later, R-ace’s Akshay Bohra moved into first place by 0.054s, and the number of drivers who had set flying laps doubled to 10. Bohra’s team-mate Jin Nakamura also snuck ahead of Yeselaho, which demoted Sainteloc’s Nikita Bedrin and Trident’s Ruiqi Liu too, and with two hours to go CL Motorsport’s Maceo Capietto went sixth fastest.

Matteo De Palo left the pits three times without ever completing a timed lap, then after doing three more runs the Trident driver went fastest by almost half a second with a 1m37.398s. Giltaire meanwhile had not left the pits at all for half of the session, but went ninth quickest when he eventually did.

CL’s Zachary David usurped De Palo by 0.1s with half an hour to go, as Capietto improved to third with a 1m37.614s. He concluded his second run by then getting within 0.015s of David.

Race Performance Motorsport’s Enzo Yeh improved twice in the final 10 minutes, and CL’s drivers were the only ones out at the end. Both improved on their final efforts, with a 1m37.190s putting Capietto 0.038s ahead.

Day two results

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