The Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine’s month of pre-season collective testing came to an end last week at Hockenheim after prior visits to Barcelona and Paul Ricard, where Feeder Series was in attendance. What did we learn, and which of the 11 teams and 33 drivers appear to be the ones to beat?

By Perceval Wolff

Following a 2023 season that saw F1 prospect Andrea Kimi Antonelli crowned champion as a rookie, the attention of the FRECA paddock has turned to the 33 drivers aiming to follow in the footsteps of the 17-year-old Italian prodigy in the series’ fourth season.

FRECA held six pre-season testing days in April for drivers to get acclimated to the car, though 22 of the drivers had already raced in Formula Regional machinery during the winter in the Middle East or Oceania.

For the drivers and teams, these test days are a crucial opportunity to prepare race simulations, warm-up laps for qualifying runs, tyre management, and the like. Though the results should be taken with a pinch of salt, some drivers and teams were more satisfied and confident than others.

Still two top teams

Last year, Prema and R-ace GP battled for the teams’ title until the final lap of the final race at Hockenheim, when Antonelli sealed it in Prema’s favour by passing Trident’s Nikhil Bohra. The Italian team finished with 512 points to R-ace’s 510, with the third-best team, Van Amersfoort Racing, finishing with 226 points.

This season, once again, the Italian and French teams seem to have a target on their backs – quite literally, as they were reportedly the fastest in race simulations. Moreover, the two teams put their drivers in the top 10 in many of the sessions at Barcelona and Paul Ricard.

The Prema trio of Rafael Câmara, Ugo Ugochukwu and James Wharton have been evenly matched in their qualifying and race simulations. Despite Câmara’s year of experience in FRECA, it’s hard to tell so far who will come out on top.

The rebranded Prema cars of the all-female Iron Dames team had a little more difficulty, with reigning F1 Academy champion Marta García usually in the second half of the standings. Her teammate Doriane Pin only took part in the final test at Hockenheim, following the announcement of the standalone Iron Dames squad, and will have very limited mileage compared to her rivals.

Unlike last year, all three R-ace GP drivers – rookies Tuukka Taponen, Zachary David and Enzo Deligny – seem able to fight for top positions. After winning FRMEC this winter, Finnish Ferrari junior Taponen may have reinforced his status as the favourite by being the fastest R-ace GP driver in testing at Paul Ricard. Both David and Deligny also impressed, with the French-Chinese driver faster than the reigning FRMEC champion in Barcelona.

Following his 16th birthday – which he celebrated in the R-ace garage at Paul Ricard with Spanish F4 rivals Théophile Naël, Matteo de Palo, Valerio Rinicella and Pedro Clerot notably – Deligny received his French international racing license. He had done the previous pre-season tests with a Spanish licence.

Charging up the field

But other teams are not willing to give up the fight to R-ace and Prema just yet. After a difficult 2023 season, ART GP has impressed many people in testing after recruiting the last two French F4 champions, Alessandro Giusti and Evan Giltaire. The team were very satisfied with their race pace, especially at Paul Ricard, where they said they were “nearly in R-ace and Prema’s times”. Rookie driver Giltaire has been the most impressive ART driver so far, often outpacing Giusti, who moves across from G4 Racing, at Barcelona, Paul Ricard and Hockenheim.

The same goes for rookies Brando Badoer of Van Amersfoort and Naël of Saintéloc, who were, alongside Giltaire, the three names most often seen alongside the Prema and R-ace drivers. Both of them seem already very at ease, topping several time sessions, following a strong FRMEC campaign this winter.

RPM could also be in the mix with Noah Strømsted even though most of the teams were less confident about the performance of the Irish-Italian squad. Notably, Pierre-Louis Chovet, who drove for RPM in the last three rounds of 2022, was in their garage at Paul Ricard as a driver coach, a role he has also filled with Drivex in Eurocup-3.

Teams with fewer guarantees

There has been a lot of noise around MP Motorsport, which is rumoured to be entering its final FRECA season. Even though the team haven’t confirmed this, an exit would make sense for one of the founding teams of Eurocup-3, another Formula Regional series that launched last year. Even though the team has been quite discreet overall, Rinicella was surprisingly often the fastest driver compared to his experienced teammates, Bohra and Nikita Bedrin.

Update posted on April 30th, 11:54 CEST: MP Motorsport has denied these rumours to Feeder Series, by saying they had “zero intentions of leaving FRECA. FRECA and its direct predecessor Formula Renault is and has been very successful for us for the last 20 years”.

It was the opposite situation at Trident, where third-year driver Roman Bilinski carried the team. “It’s rare to work with a driver for three years in the same category,” team principal Luca Zerbini told Feeder Series. “In this so competitive championship, especially this year, we made the gamble of experience with Roman. Trident is his home.”

G4 Racing and KIC Motorsport have been very discreet during all the pre-season tests, though G4’s Kanato Le showed steady progression compared to his teammates. G4 Racing CEO Patrick Gnos told Feeder Series that following last year’s successes, G4 was thinking of expanding to endurance racing, as R-ace did this season in the Michelin Le Mans Cup’s LMP3 class.

At KIC, the two cars of Costa Toparis and Alex Sawer will be branded with an Evans GP livery to reflect the Australian team’s technical support for these two cars. Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi will have a standard KIC livery, which is visually similar to the new black-and-red ART livery.

As was previously reported by Feeder Series, Arden Motorsport and Monolite Racing will not be taking part in the 2024 FRECA season.

The role of engines and track conditions

In FRECA, as in other series, engines are a big talking point. Several teams say that performance differences across a season’s rounds are often due to differences in the 1.8-litre, four-cylinder Oreca-prepared Renault engines.

“There are some differences in the engines. The only way to resolve that is to buy and buy again different engines and hope to have a good one. That helps the biggest teams to stay on top. Everyone can’t afford to keep on paying €20,000 again and again,” a representative from one FRECA team told Feeder Series.

A maximum of three engines can be registered for each driver per year. During pre-season testing, most of the teams tend to use old, worn-out engines that won’t race during the championship and try to save their best engines for the start of the season.

Tyres also contribute significantly to performance, and there was incentive to save them for the Hockenheim pre-season test. The pre-season tests in Barcelona and Paul Ricard took place in considerably colder and windier conditions than what teams can expect for the FRECA rounds there in September and July respectively. The Hockenheim test, however, should have largely the same conditions as the opening round two weeks later, so the running there was considered more representative and relevant.

Header photo credit: Perceval Wolff