Currently 23rd in his rookie campaign in Formula Regional Europe, French F4 graduate Édouard Borgna has already stepped onto the podium this year with a rookie category win despite not scoring any overall points. Feeder Series caught up with the G4 Racing driver to learn about the atypical pathway that led him to FR Europe success in Misano.

By Perceval Wolff-Taffus

In the second race of the opening round of FR Europe’s 2025 season at Misano, it was little surprise to see Evan Giltaire on the top step of the podium with Matteo De Palo and Freddie Slater beside him.

More surprising, however, was the fourth driver on that podium, the rookie category winner: 20-year-old Édouard Borgna, a French racing driver who had only begun his journey in motorsport three years ago and is now mentored by Pierre Gasly’s former coach.

Borgna’s profile within the list of rookie winners is atypical. Previous race winners in the class include Isack Hadjar, Gabriel Bortoleto, Leonardo Fornaroli and Martinius Stenshorne – all highly rated prospects who had been karting or racing for most of their lives. But this year, only five of the 30 drivers participating in the series have been rookies, and none have especially glittering résumés on paper.

To be eligible for the rookie category, drivers must have competed in three or fewer Formula Regional events. This excludes all drivers who participated in a full winter series season, such as FR Middle East, at the beginning of the year. As these series have increased in popularity over the last few years, fewer and fewer drivers have become eligible for the rookie category.

Dion Gowda, Tim Gerhards, Édouard Borgna, Saqer Al Maosherji and Arthur Aegerter are the five rookie drivers in 2025, with Gowda being the only one so far to have scored points in the overall standings. The Indian driver has been the rookie winner at every race except the second race at Misano, from which he retired after colliding with Rashid Al Dhaheri while battling for seventh.

Instead, it was Borgna, the race’s 18th-place finisher overall, who took the rookie win.

“From a mental point of view, it’s always nice,” Borgna says of the result. “In the short term, it’s of course pleasant. I can show myself that way. In the long term, it’s not what we are looking for. The target would be to score points. When you see the rookies from the past few years, Sandro [Giusti], Stenshorne, Isack, these are drivers at an unbelievable level. So it’s a bit odd but it’s important for the mind to develop, to gain confidence.”

Borgna, now 20, was not predestined to be in motorsport. He only started competition at 18 years old thanks to drivers of his age who were already in F3.

“I’ve always been a fan of motorsport thanks to my brother. He always showed me F1. I loved it,” Borgna says.

“Once, I had the opportunity to go see an FIA F3 round in Prema’s garage, at the time where there was Arthur Leclerc, Jak Crawford, Ollie Bearman… drivers who are now touching their F1 dreams. I went to Imola in 2022 and I was seeing 16-year-old drivers who were my age. I was just wondering, ‘Why am I not with them?’. It’s silly, but I really realised that weekend that I’d always wondered what I wanted to do in the future – and that’s what I wanted to do.”

Borgna then began gaining mileage in single-seaters, stepping into an F4 car for the first time for a test at the Circuit de Croix-en-Ternois in the north of France in September 2022.

“I had never done anything in karting. I didn’t have a driver’s licence,” Borgna explains. “It was quite tricky.”

Still, the French driver quickly secured an important source of support in Denis Plichet, a former coach of Gasly and Giusti.

“My father was looking for an experienced coach with vast technical knowledge. I met him for the first time at Paul Ricard. I was testing with Winfield, and Sandro was doing his first tests with G4 Racing,” Borgna explains.

“I remember in Magny-Cours, it was my sixth day of testing and I was 12 seconds away from the references. I was wondering how he kept the motivation of coaching me. At the start, I was a little afraid of him, but at the end of the day, he’s an awesome person, very thoughtful. We do things step by step. We don’t push things too quickly.”

Seven months later, Borgna began his maiden single-seater season in French F4, at 18 years old.

“It’s as if I was arriving in college – except that everyone had done high school before unlike me!” he says.

“I had expectations of doing two seasons right from the start. We wanted to learn as much as possible.”

Borgna finished 26th in 2023 and then 19th in 2024. He scored one single point in his sophomore F4 season in heavy rain at Nürburgring, rising from 17th on the grid to eighth.

“Even after one season, I was missing what all the other drivers had been used to doing for years,” he says. “These were not the results I was aiming for. It’s always difficult for the mind to always be behind.”

Despite a disappointing 2024, Borgna felt the need to learn new things in motorsport. He therefore graduated to FR Europe with G4 Racing, with whom Plichet retained strong links.

“The first time I tested in a FRECA, I hadn’t driven for four months. And I was pretty comfortable. It’s a very complicated car, but I was really having fun with it. And after a few test days, the pace was there – though not the pace to fight in front of the field, because the level in FRECA is simply stratospheric,” he says.

“We knew that this would be a difficult year but that it would allow me to gain invaluable experience, to learn with the greatest.”

G4 had struggled to attract drivers for the whole season. Borgna was the only driver at the team for the last round at Zandvoort despite a one-off appearance by former F3 driver and 2023 Italian F4 champion Kacper Sztuka at the season opener. Last week, the team announced they had signed F4 graduate Edu Robinson for the remainder of the season, and the team added Enzo Richer for the Hungaroring round on Monday.

“G4 is a great team,” Borgna says. “They have good setups from when Sandro was with them. It was nice to drive with Kacper at Misano, to have a real benchmark, to have a teammate that brings you to the top. The engineers at G4 are really excellent. We can still work and progress despite the fact that we don’t have a driver like Kacper for the rest of the year.”

In three weekends, Borgna has had a best race result of 18th from race two at Misano, the same race in which he took his sole rookie win so far.

“Of course it’s not the top of the top, but the pace is there and I’m able to fight with drivers that have a strong level and a high level of experience that I don’t have,” he says.

Junior single-seater racing followers often wonder why some drivers push themselves to  rise through the junior ladder despite underwhelming results. Borgna, by his own admission, is one such driver. So what is his ultimate target?

“For the moment, I will give all my best to aim, day after day, meeting after meeting, season after season, for F1. I want to go the furthest I can go in single-seaters to hope to step up one day in an F1 car, whatever the reason. To be in a real F1 seat, it’s the ultimate dream of every single-seater driver,” he says.

“I know I have an atypical pathway. I know I’m quite old. But it also means I’m more mature, more thoughtful. All the work, all the effort I’m spending is to reach this objective.”

He also believes that single-seaters are the best racing school.

“It’s a car that is so demanding physically, mentally,” he says. “It’s so hard to drive that when you arrive in categories where there are assists and aids in the car, you understand them faster. There are always things where you need to adapt – weight, brakes, et cetera – but single-seaters are the most complicated category from a driving point of view.”

“You take the example of Frank Porté Ruiz. He leaves F4 [after 2024]. He arrives in Porsche Supercup. The level is there. Same for Augustin Bernier in Ultimate Cup,” he continues. “As soon as you leave single-seaters, we have so much technical knowledge that it allows us to go elsewhere afterwards.”

Borgna, like many drivers, doesn’t know yet where his future lies.

“It’s hard to say. I’m focused on my year in FRECA. I would really like to prove myself here, to build something really solid before F3,” he says. “There are enormous financial constraints. It’s not like football. Tomorrow, I can’t step into the car and say ‘I don’t care about today’. It requires so much effort to be there that I’m obliged to do my maximum.”

“I have the chance to be where I am today,” he adds. ”And because of that, I need to prove myself and give all my best.”

Header photo credit: Alex Galli