For the first time in his career, Enzo Deligny will race in single-seaters without a Red Bull livery after finishing only 12th in his maiden Formula Regional Europe campaign. Ahead of his FR Middle East campaign with reigning teams’ champions R-ace GP, the 2023 Spanish F4 rookie champion opened up on the split and on how he plans to rebound.

By Perceval Wolff-Taffus

After months of rumours, it was finally confirmed last week that Deligny would stay with R-ace GP for 2025 in FR Middle East and FR Europe.

He will do so, however, without the Red Bull support he had received for the previous two years. He was dropped following an underwhelming season in FR Europe that he finished with a best race result of fourth and two rookie wins.

What went wrong?

“It was a mix of things,” Deligny tells me on Twitch at the start of January. “But the biggest issue we had all season long was the speed in straights. It was much harder to fight in front, so we had to fight to find other solutions and make some compromises with our setup. It was definitely not ideal, but I was able to drive all the tracks and gain experience for 2025.”

When Deligny was announced to be joining the Red Bull Junior Team in January 2023 at the age of 14, he had come off a year in senior karting in which he finished second in the WSK Final Cup and fourth in the FIA Karting European Championship. Only a few months later, junior programme adviser Helmut Marko had already laid out an ambitious proposal for Deligny: to ascend to F3 in 2024 after just one year in F4.

“After I think my third weekend in F4, [Marko] was talking about the next year,” Deligny said. “He was very ambitious about going quickly up the steps, but we were more on the other side and we wanted to focus on my development and just be certain that we could be truly ready for F3.”

A year and a half later, Deligny is neither in F3 nor in the Red Bull Junior Team. Feeder Series understands that his and Red Bull’s decision to part ways happened several months ago.

“It was a bit hard,” Deligny said of his Red Bull departure, “but last year there were some little things that were outside of my control. They took a lot of drivers for this year, but I think we’re keeping a close relation with Red Bull. If I perform well, I can definitely come back to Red Bull.”

There are obvious parallels between the careers of Deligny and mentor Pierre Gasly. Red Bull had an option on Gasly in 2012 during his maiden Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 season in 2012, but the Frenchman, also driving for R-ace, finished only 10th and did not earn a full place at the Red Bull Junior Team. By taking the title the year later, he regained that spot. He remained affiliated with Red Bull until the end of 2022.

Deligny still keeps a close relationship with Gasly, who has since become an Alpine F1 driver.

“We’re both managed by Guillaume Le Goff and we both live in Milan, so I see him from time to time. I supported him in the garage last year in Imola too. Sometimes we eat together. When I see him, he gives me tips and things like that.”

In ascending to F1 as a Red Bull junior, Gasly got to use both the junior programme and F1 team simulators at Red Bull. The latter, Deligny explained, is highly advanced and not accessible to all Red Bull juniors, with only an estimated 20 people able to see it. 

“It’s funny because the junior sim is undoubtedly the best sim I’ve ever raced, but compared to the F1 simulator, it’s still much less advanced even if it’s super good,” he said.

“The first time I went into the [junior] sim, like all the other junior drivers for the last 10 years, I did a test on the same simulator on three tracks – Barcelona, Hungary and Silverstone – with three different cars: Formula Renault 2.0, F3 and F2, I think. It went quite well. There were at least 100 drivers from the last 10 years who had done it, and I think I was fourth or fifth, so that was not bad.”

Deligny’s path to redemption begins in FR Middle East in preparation for his planned yet unannounced FR Europe campaign with R-ace. While he aims to follow in former R-ace teammate Tuukka Taponen’s shoes by winning the winter series title, Deligny faces stiff competition, not least from teammate and reigning FR World Cup winner Ugo Ugochukwu.

“It’s a very good series and there will be multiple drivers going directly to F3 afterwards who are also racing in the Middle East,” he said. “Of course, it would be good to win as [Taponen] did. Everyone wants to win, but I think the overall goal would just be to fight at the front.”

Having only turned 16 in April of last year, he was too young to compete in FR Middle East’s 2024 season. Now, he will be simultaneously a series newcomer in the Middle East and one of the team’s experienced drivers.

“I know there are some things I need to improve on driving, little details. But with two new teammates [Akshay Bohra and Jin Nakamura] for next season and Taponen leaving for F3, I have to get closer to the team and take that role of leader, and really try to improve the car and ensure that we can do better at each track with the setup.”

Deligny already showed glimpses of progress by topping one of the post-season testing days at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in November.

“The first winter tests have been pretty positive,” he added. “In the first test, we had the actual cars, and that went quite well. I was first. And after this test, we switched to older test cars. I had Hadrien David’s former car, which was two years old, while the others had the cars of [2019 FRenault Eurocup champion Oscar] Piastri and [2020 runner-up] Caio Collet. We use these cars to preserve our race cars for the season. We were not super focused on speed, just on trying to develop the best setup possible.”

For the second year in a row, Deligny will have at his disposal not only Hadrien David’s car but also the 2021 FR Europe runner-up’s experience.

“Hadrien will be my coach for the whole of 2025,” he said. “He is very close to R-ace. He did two years with them, which went very well, and we get along very well.”

David never made it beyond FR level in single-seaters, but Deligny plans to surpass his coach’s progress on the ladder. If he does so, he plans to change coaches and reunite with three-time senior world karting champion Lorenzo Travisanutto, who he says is “like a brother” to him.

Deligny confirmed that his goal is to go up to F3 in 2026. Both the injury-affected Roman Bilinski and Alpine junior Nicola Lacorte will graduate to F3 in 2025 despite having finished behind Deligny in the FR Europe standings, but the 16-year-old Frenchman has no qualms about doing another year in FR.

“I think it was a good idea to do a second year,” he said. “Last season, I was the youngest driver in FRECA and the only driver born in 2008. Next season, there will be more drivers from my generation like [Freddie] Slater, who’s coming up. So I will align a bit more with my generation, and I will be even more ready for F3 if I move up in 2026.”

Prema driver Slater, Italian F4’s reigning and statistically most dominant champion, is the rival Deligny picks as his top contender for the title this coming FR Europe season. Other drivers he nominated as likely championship combatants were ART Grand Prix sophomore Evan Giltaire, who finished seventh last year; Van Amersfoort Racing sophomore Pedro Clerot, who finished eighth; and Clerot’s VAR teammate and series rookie Hiyu Yamakoshi, whom Deligny described as “a very good driver”.

FR Middle East’s opening round of 2025 at Yas Marina on Saturday 18 January will launch a five-round series that lasts until the end of February. Following series-wide tests in March and April, FR Europe will start at Misano at the beginning of May.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency