The 2025 season brought the biggest organisational changes to the Formula Winter Series in its short history as Gedlich Racing organised the championship by itself after collaborating with Spanish F4 organisers Agrupación Deportiva F4 Spain the previous year. Feeder Series spoke with Gedlich and new teams Hitech and Van Amersfoort Racing.

By Finjo Muschlien

On 18 July 2024, Gedlich announced its split with Agrupación Deportiva F4 Spain and the launch of the Spanish F4 Winter Championship, which later was renamed the Eurocup-4 Spanish Winter Championship. 

By that time, Gedlich had already announced FWS’ 2025 calendar, but Spanish F4’s organisers had yet to communicate anything to the public about the split or the new series. The first official announcements about it came in October, with the calendar updated and series name changed to Eurocup-4 in the weeks leading up to the season. 

“The changeover to organising without F4 Spain was of course there at first,” FWS coordinator Stefan Lehner told Feeder Series. “It was easier in advance because you no longer had to coordinate everything, but on site you also realised that the number of people wasn’t there, which is why we made the decision with Miguel [Pinto Coelho] being there from the second race weekend.” 

Motorsport administrator Pinto Coelho was one of several people Gedlich brought on to bolster their staff in their busiest-ever winter. Other additions to the FWS team were race director Neus Santamaría, F1 Academy’s deputy for the same role; David Fuentes and Enric Arrazola, who split chief steward duties; and Ivan Sanchez as new scrutineer.

While many championship organisers promote only one or two series, Gedlich has to manage four: FWS, the GT Winter Series, the GT4 Winter Series, and the Prototype Winter Series. Those were in addition to its first-ever six-hour endurance races in Portimão and Barcelona. The planned debut of the GT3 All-Stars series did not take place as not enough participants applied. 

“It was more work for us because we could no longer share the effort,” Lehner added about FWS. “But of course, that also meant that this year, we had to do all the regulations and sporting preparation, which the Spaniards did completely last year. That means in addition to the other series, there was one more to do, and compared to the GT series, you have to turn over every stone three times more in the formula series. Of course, it took a lot more time in the summer to prepare everything.”

In addition to returning FWS to having a fully in-house organisation, Gedlich also made several changes to the FWS technical package. The series switched from Hankook to Pirelli tyres for the 2025 season to cater to teams that compete in F1 Academy, Italian F4, British F4 or F4 CEZ. As in Italian F4, FWS used brake pads and discs by TM Performance, switching over from Spanish F4’s PFC pads and discs, which must be at minimum 16 millimetres thick rather than 17 as now.

All of these made the series more attractive to teams outside of Spanish F4 and brought several new additions to the grid for 2025. 

Reigning British F4 teams’ champions Hitech forwent their customary entry in the F4 Middle East Championship, previously F4 UAE, to join FWS. Italian F4’s Van Amersfoort Racing and F4 CEZ’s Renauer Motorsport also joined FWS, while AS Motorsport – who compete in both – returned after a year out in 2024.

For Dominic Stott, Hitech’s F4 team manager, logistics and scheduling played a big part in the team’s decision to join FWS, in which they finished as the second-placed team.

“It’s a big logistical challenge with sending the cars October, November for us if they are shipped out,” Stott said about racing in the Middle East. “You have to be prepared a lot further ahead. With this winter series, it’s worked out really well for us this year. There is no guarantee we’re back next year, but we have had good results. We feel like we had been competitive from the off. 

“We can go and test at these circuits in November, December, two or three days at the end of last year, and then coming here in January really helped us with preparation. You start on the front foot when you get here.

“It’s tricky in the UAE when you can’t go and test there in November, December. We’re rolling straight into British F4, so the truck will be back in a couple of days – swap a few engines around and get on the road for British testing. With the UAE, you either have separate cars or you wait for them a few weeks to be shipped back, [but] we are straight back into British now. It’s a bit more of a smoother transition.”

Stott said the FWS calendar struck a good balance between old-school British tracks and the newer breed of circuits dotting the F1 and other international racing calendars. The series raced this year at Portimão and Barcelona, both of which have hosted F1 in the 2020s, and Valencia and Aragón, two MotoGP tracks used frequently for junior single-seater events.

“F1’s great circuits in Spain or UAE are similar in that way. There is a lot of run-off. The British tracks are very unforgiving,” he said. ”In the UK, the track limits mean that you are in the gravel at most places. It’s between the two.”

The Iberian climate also shared more with England’s than did that of the Middle East.

“The weather is more similar to what we race in the UK – not just the rain but definitely the wet weather running we had out here. I think we have proved that we’re quite strong in the wet from all the running we do in the UK. We had a very wet year last year, so that has definitely helped us. I think some of the European and UAE teams, they don’t do much running in the wet, so it’s definitely a big advantage.”

Before joining FWS, Van Amersfoort previously did only testing during the winters to prepare for their Italian F4 and E4 campaigns. In 2023, they partnered with Pinnacle Motorsport in F4 UAE, while last year, they supported the Monlau Motorsport entries in FWS. 

FWS’ changes for 2025 enticed Van Amersfoort to run an entry of their own in the series, F4 team manager Sander van der Perre explained to Feeder Series. On reflection, van der Perre also praised the organisation of Gedlich and support partner Race Ready and highlighted the fact that drivers could “really race each other” as they would in Italian F4.

“It was a nice championship for sure,” he said. “They also applied the Italian rules regarding Pirelli tyres and brake pads and so on, so for us, it was also helpful to compete also to the teams we will compete in Italian F4.

“We had a lot of practice on the Thursdays and Fridays always, and then nice races on Saturday, Sunday. Very good preparation for the team, mechanics, engineers, as for the drivers of course to already get some racecraft in before we start that Italian championship.

“When they changed to the Italian regulations, we were convinced of competing here, as all the teams are doing, so we cannot stay out.”

Header photo credit: Daniel Bürgin

Editor’s note, 19 March 2025, 1:04 CET: A previous version of this article mentioned that Race Ready was a new timing partner for 2025. Race Ready are the series’ long-standing organisational partner. Time Service provide timekeeping.