Lin Chenghua only discovered his interest in motorsport in 2021. Four years later, he has already stepped up to cars and made a transition from touring cars to Formula 4 and eventually Formula Regional machinery. The Chinese driver reveals the reasons behind his unconventional racing path and the difficulties he faced this year that unexpectedly ended his F4 campaign.

By Finjo Muschlien

It’s the end of 2021. Lin has just returned to his home in Shanghai from university in the United States. Eager to chase a new hobby, he discovers a go-kart track in his hometown owned by Ma Qinghua – the first Chinese driver to take part in an F1 practice session.

Lin is nowhere near being a professional racing driver. In fact, it is his first time sitting in a kart, and he is slow – really slow. His interest in racing, however, increases rapidly. Lin gets to know Ma, who gives him some advice and introduces him into the world of motorsport. 

Ma, a reserve driver for HRT in 2012 and Caterham in 2013, has always had a close connection to another category of motorsport – touring cars. In 2011, before he even reached F1, Ma was crowned champion in the China Touring Car Championship’s 1600cc class. He took his second title in the discipline in 2020 by winning the TCR China Touring Car Championship. 

“Lucky for me, we get along quite well and Ma officially introduced me into the world of Motorsport,” Lin told Feeder Series. “He introduced me to the Lynk & Co 03 TCR team in China, and we had done a couple tests [in] which the results were not too bad.”

Without any previous experience in racing, let alone competitive karting, Lin entered the final four rounds of the TCR Asia series in 2022, aged 25 at the time. His first full campaign followed in 2023, when he entered the TCR China Touring Car Championship.

“During my first season in the China Touring Car Championship in 2023, I found myself even deeper in love with this sport,” he said. “I always maximise my effort in every single session because deep down, I realised I wanted to learn more and I wanted to become faster than the driver I was yesterday.

“The season was up and down, all over the place, but I managed to win both of the races in [the Am Cup class of the TCR China] Macau Grand Prix and put me at third in the amateur championship.

“Sure I was happy and all, but I still felt like I could’ve done better, and I still wanted to learn more and to finish in even higher positions.”

Lin finished his first season of racing 21st overall with two points finishes. In the Am class, he came third with two wins. 

But 2023 turned out to be the end of that chapter of his career. He decided to take the uncommon step of moving from touring cars to F4. Even more unusually, he took this step not in his home country of China but in Japan.

“That is the moment I decided to take it to the extreme,” he said. “I decided to forget all the races I’ve done in China and start all over again in Japan, just to compete in a very harsh environment [that] will make me step up faster.”

Lin loved the challenge. Explaining his motivation in switching to Japanese racing, he said that ‘Japan has reached the pinnacle of motorsport’ and ‘to compete in such a harsh environment would bring [him] a lot of benefits as a racing driver’.

“The main difference between racing in China and in Japan,” he said, “is the competitive environment. Everybody’s time gap is super close. Racing in Japan requires you to be at your best every single session, and every single lap during the race. It’s unforgiving to make a mistake here. Sometimes it will cost you the entire race.” 

Lin’s relative lack of experience in racing and single-seaters meant he had to adapt to the basics of driving first before he could challenge Japan’s rising talents. 

“Switching to the single-seater series [was] extremely difficult for me,” he said. “I started racing in touring cars. I had no experience with go-karting or anything related to motorsport when I was a kid. I think it was the basic skills and lack of experience that I was missing [that caused] the difficulty for me switching to formula cars.”

The difficulties Lin had in Japanese F4 became clear early on, both on track and on the results pages. Lin took just one points finish all season in the second race of the championship, when frontrunners TGR-DC Racing School, HFDP with B-Max Racing and Ponos Racing withdrew because of worries about engine failures. Lin finished that race 10th, having started 11th, but his best starting position otherwise was 16th for race two in the fifth round at Autopolis, when the grid was based on practice results. 

“To be honest, I had expected such a difficult start,” he said. “For obvious reasons, all the drivers competing with me in the same race [have] 10 years of or above experience than I [have]. Also, during the first year, I was still adjusting to the formula cars, so before the season [started] I already told myself my chances of [being] faster than others are minimum.

“But it’s okay. I’m here to learn and to push my limits. The results will be tough to swallow, but I will take it with an open mind.”

Lin teamed up for that campaign with Akiland Racing, supported by the Buzz Factory racing programme. The previous year, the team ran Ryota Horachi and set him up for a successful 2024 in which he came second in the series while racing for HFDP with B-Max Racing.

Whilst Lin’s season didn’t turn out to be as successful as Horachi’s, he said he still valued the experience. 

“They introduced me to all the new tracks and also shared a lot of experience with the track of their own,” the 28-year-old said. “They are one of the reasons I drive better these days.”

For 2025, Lin switched to debutants Ragno Motor Sport, with whom he has raced in both Japanese F4 and the FRegional Japanese Championship. His season in F4, however, has not gone to plan at all.

In the pre-season spring test at Fuji, he came 25th of 26 in the Champion Class, 8.239 seconds behind the fastest driver, Shota Sakai, after 32 laps. 

In the opening round of the season, likewise held at Fuji, 49 drivers were entered, but just 45 would qualify for the race, with the bottom two in each of the Champion Class and Independent Class eliminated. 

Unfortunately for Lin, he finished 29th of 30 drivers in class, and his second-fastest time, which set the grid for race two, also placed him only 29th. 

With Fujita Pharmacy Racing’s Shouma Arimura absent, however, Lin could fill the 28th and final grid slot in that second race. He came 20th in the race and with that result qualified for the third race, from which he retired after the first lap. 

In the second round, also at Fuji, he again failed to qualify for the races. This time, he was 2.822s away from the pacesetter – significantly more than in the previous round, when he was just 1.844s behind the pole time.

There was another factor behind the gap in performance, as Lin explained. An engine issue had been discovered on Thursday, and he sat out that day’s final practice session after an engine change. Still, it wasn’t enough.

“This year me and my team had [encountered] engine malfunctions which cannot be resolved, and after detailed discussion and several meetings with team and team manager Mr. Ide Yuji, we decided to drop from [the] 2025 FIA F4 Japanese Championship,” he explained.

Lin is thus absent from this weekend’s round at Suzuka, and for the remainder of the year, he is putting his focus on his FR Japan campaign. He has competed in the second and third rounds so far, finishing fourth twice and fifth twice across the four races.

“It was actually a very surprising experience with Formula Regional,” he said. “At the beginning of the year, we tested the car – and the results are very good. As a driver, I also have this strange feeling which makes me feel very confident with the car.”

The series, once dominated by independents and privateers, welcomed two established stalwarts of the Japanese racing scene in B-Max Racing and Toyota-backed TOM’S for the 2025 season. Both teams have been frontrunners in F4 and in Super Formula Lights, and they have brought some of Japanese F4’s brightest talents with them.

“There might not be too many entries in this championship, but it’s also a very high-level competitive race. We have experienced and fast young drivers from TGR in TOM’S and in B-Max, and other well-known experienced drivers in other teams,” Lin explained.

“My current goal for this year will be to finish on podiums in future Formula Regional races. As a driver, I hope to [improve] my skills and to gain more experience when this year is done.”

FR Japan has proven to be a good stepping stone in recent years, and several of its international alumni in particular have climbed the junior single-seater ladder across the world. Sebastian Manson of New Zealand, last year’s second-place finisher, is the most recent example, moving to the USF Pro 2000 championship this year. The year before, runner-up Liam Sceats made the switch to the IndyCar ladder, and he is now competing in Indy NXT. 

For Lin, it’s clear that switching to another continent is not in the cards – at least not yet. 

“My plan [is to stay] in Japan in the future couple of years,” he said. “I would like to try Super Formula Lights and some GT races. Europe has a lot of tracks on my checklist too, but one step at a time.

“With my circumstances of missing so many years of experience, to become the top driver in a very short period of time will be difficult, [but] I’m still willing to try as hard as I can to step up. I always keep pushing myself until the end.”

Header photo credit: Courtesy of Lin Chenghua