Williams Racing sporting director Sven Smeets confirmed to Feeder Series that Oleksandr Bondarev, a member of the team’s driver academy, will take part in the final two Italian Formula 4 rounds later this year ahead of a full year in F4 in 2025.

By George Sanderson

Bondarev, who turned 15 in April, became the first Ukrainian racer in history to sign with a Formula One team when he joined Williams’ academy in September 2023. He is currently competing in OK karting with Prema’s kart team and sits 18th of 82 competitors in the FIA Karting European Championship standings at the halfway point of the season.

Speaking on the Feeder Series Podcast, Smeets, who oversees the Williams Racing Driver Academy, explained what Bondarev’s immediate future will look like.

“When you are in karting, you need to make a two-year plan. There is no other choice,” he said.

“We have a programme in place for him. So he is, for the moment, still concentrating on the OK karting, the European championships, but he is starting to test, I think, in five days.”

While Bondarev had, according to Smeets, “already done F4 testing” by the time of recording on 30 May, a more intensive programme has since begun.

“The real test program is starting in five days,” Smeets explained. “Once started, so at the beginning of June, there is an intensive test program all the way up to the end of the year.

“He will do the last two races of the Italian F4 Championship, and then he will prepare for F4 UAE in the winter to then participate in F4 UAE in January [and] February before he starts racing in Italian F4 [next year].” F4 UAE is set to be rebranded to F4 Middle East for 2025.

That means Bondarev will make his single-seater debut at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya at Italian F4’s sixth round, to be held 27–29 September, before contesting the season finale at Monza four weeks later. A step up with Prema had been rumoured since late last year.

His F4 debut would follow the FIA Karting World Championship, which will take place 12–15 September at the PF International karting circuit in England. That event is likely to be his last in senior karting.

How Williams helps drivers make the step up

This intense summer training program set out for Bondarev is to assist with what Smeets describes as a “transfer period” for those making the step up from karting to driving in a car.

“From OK karting into cars is quite a big change because they are leaving their karting seasons behind and going to cars, so you cannot just ask from them to stop karting today and start racing tomorrow in a car.”

Smeets explained that Williams goes through a careful process to identify young drivers’ levels. Before stepping up, karters like Bondarev are given time in a “high-quality e-sports simulator” with F4 and F3 models so that the team can see how they would adapt to their new surroundings.

“We normally have a performance race engineer with them that gives them a program that they have to run, and normally there is somebody from the sports science department there to see how they cope with pressure, how they feed back, and all sorts of things.”

Smeets separately suggested that Alessandro Giusti, currently third in his second year in the Formula Regional European Championship, would be expected to step up to F3 for 2025. He also said of Luke Browning, F3’s current second-placed driver, that “if he does well, he has to move on to F2”.

A remarkable comeback from injury

The confirmation of Bondarev’s plans for the remainder of 2024 is the latest chapter in what has been a remarkable comeback story for the Ukrainian. In April 2022, while racing at Zuera in the OKJ class of the FIA Karting European Championship, he suffered a severe leg injury as a result of a serious crash in his final heat race and had to undergo 10 surgeries as a result.

He engaged in daily rehabilitation before returning to the track six months later for the two-round WSK Final Cup, in which he finished 28th. He ended the year with second in the OKJ class of the LeCont Trophy in Valencia.

Then in July 2023, one year and three months after his accident, he completed a fairy-tale return to European karting by winning the OKJ title, following in the footsteps of current F1 drivers George Russell, Lando Norris and Alex Albon. He was the first Ukrainian in the history of the championship to win the title.

You can hear more from Williams’ Sven Smeets in the 5 June episode of the Feeder Series Podcast, hosted by Jim Kimberley.

Header photo credit: Williams Racing