Vivek Kanthan was one of the biggest revelations in the Eurocup-4 Spanish Winter Championship, finishing fifth overall and winning the rookie title. Ahead of the first round of Spanish F4 next weekend, Feeder Series sat down with the 15-year-old New Yorker to learn more about how he plans to bridge the gap to his sophomore teammates in the main series.

By Perceval Wolff-Taffus

Spanish F4’s new-for-2025 winter series attracted several rookies who were widely expected to fight at the front right from the start. Among the rookie title favourites were Red Bull juniors Niklas Schaufler and Christopher El Feghali as well as Richard Mille Young Talent Academy scholarship winner Ean Eyckmans.

But they all finished behind Campos Racing’s Vivek Kanthan, who was also making his single-seater debut. The young American clinched four podiums, all four of which doubled as rookie wins, on his way to fifth position overall in the standings.

“I would say the results were probably a lot better than I expected,” Kanthan told Feeder Series. “Going into [this series], I was taking it as a good experience for the main [season], which is what it was at the end of the day. But the results were quite strong and I’m quite happy with how it went.

“I don’t think I had specific targets in mind. The plan was to run and have fun,” he added. “The goal was just to get as much experience as possible in single-seaters, in the racing especially. In the tests, the pace was pretty promising, so I wanted to get used to single-seater racing because obviously it is very different from karting.”

Kanthan might not have been the most well-known driver on the grid at the start of the year. Still, he had found success in karting in both North America and Europe in the roughly seven years since he first got behind the wheel.

Following F1 on television with his parents, the young Kanthan discovered karting at the Grand Prix New York indoor track in Mount Kisco, New York, a 45-minute drive from his hometown of Westport, Connecticut.

The American was motivated by the success of his two racing idols, Sebastian Vettel and Nico Rosberg.

“I really liked [Rosberg’s] racing style,” he said. “He was really smart on track, very clean. With Vettel, he was my favorite driver.”

Kanthan didn’t have to wait long to clinch his first successes. Having raced at first locally, he became the New York state champion in karting in 2019. He then jumped into the national scene, finishing third in the Micro Swift class of the SKUSA Pro Tour Championship the year after. In 2021 he became the Rotax US Trophy East winner in the Mini category while also finishing as the Mini Swift runner-up in the prestigious SKUSA Supernationals at the end of the year in Las Vegas.

“The first championship we did,” Kanthan said, “was just to try out to see if it was something I wanted to do. After I won the championship, that’s when I realized this is what I wanted to do all my life.”

Before his 13th birthday in May 2022, Kanthan took the decision to leave America and move to Europe to fight against the best international drivers.

“My dad traveled with me pretty much every time, and my mum would come to some of the races as well,” he said. “But for Europe, obviously the decision was because I wanted to get to Formula 1. That’s the main goal for me, and I think motorsport is generally centred in Europe, so all the F1 academies and managers look at European karting first. That’s why we went.

“Adapting was quite a big thing because everything was different from racing in the US – the tyres were different, the grip, even the engines a little bit, and obviously the racing side was quite different. I think the grip and the racing style were the hardest things to learn. In the US, normally you have more lower-speed corners, with lower grip, while in Europe it’s a lot of high-speed corners with higher grip where you need much more confidence.

“And on the racing side, in Europe, the [drivers] are a lot more aggressive than in the US, and drivers can just push you off to get over your way. I ended up taking a few races to adapt, but I think in the end, it was fine.”

It didn’t take Kanthan long to achieve international success. In 2022, engaged in the Mini ROK category, he won the Mini ROK class of the ROK Cup Superfinal, the biggest event of the ROK category, in which all drivers use Vortex engines and OTK chassis.

“That last overtake at the end,” Kanthan said about the race, “was quite risky. Winning that was quite a relief after adjusting to Europe and getting used to the racing, so that was a good reward for the work I had done.”

This first international win in Europe helped convince him to make the jump to OK-Junior in 2023, then to OK in 2024. While in junior karting, the Parolin factory driver took his lone podium at the Rødby round of the Champions of the Future Euro Series.

“We were running at the front in general, but I think we didn’t have the package to get better results that year,” he said.

This year, Kanthan will be the only American rookie on the Spanish F4 grid. With the American junior ladder well developed and IndyCar thriving, the majority of young American drivers stay in their own country as they progress to cars – but not Kanthan.

“Formula 1 has always been my dream,” he said. “That’s why we took the European route, but the American path is still very good. It’s always something I’m open to as well, also like endurance racing.”

Kanthan took all four of his Eurocup-4 podiums in the two first rounds. He scored only in the reverse-grid sprint race in a tricky final weekend in Navarra, where he raced in the rain for the first time.

“I had done some testing under the wet, but not in Navarra and surely not in racing conditions,” he said.

“In one of the qualifying [sessions], we also made a wrong choice, and I had to drive with slick tyres in the wet, which was also obviously quite a challenge. But I learned from that in general. The pace in the wet became better and better. The lessons taken away from that were quite good, so I will be able to use it in the main series.”

After this promising start in the winter series, has Kanthan increased his ambitions for the main series?

“The goal in every championship for me is always to fight for the championship,” Kanthan explained. “But I think the pace is there to do it. This year, the competition is tough, and obviously being a rookie, there will be some experience that I will have to learn along the way, but I will give it my best shot. More than anything, I just want to get as much learning experience as possible from this championship to use it further up in other series in the future.”

Having been the top rookie in the winter series, he will now have to overcome sophomore teammates Thomas Strauven and Jan Przyrowski, who battled for the winter series title while entered under satellite squad Griffin Core by Campos.

“I’ve been close to pole position a few times, and I’ve been pretty fast in terms of race pace and in practice,” detailed Kanthan. “Probably the second-year drivers will have a bit of advantage, but for the championship, the main point will be consistency, getting results and points all the time. That’s how we win a championship.”

Spanish F4 will start its 2025 season at MotorLand Aragón next weekend, with seven rounds scheduled until mid-November.

Header photo credit: Fotocar13