Last weekend’s Euroformula Open round at the Red Bull Ring featured four new faces to the championship, as Alessandro Famularo, Luca Viișoreanu, Francisco Soldavini and Ricardo Miranda Baptista all made their debuts. Feeder Series spoke with each of them to gather their first impressions of the series.

By Marco Albertini

The four-way Euroformula Open title battle intensified in Austria as Motopark’s three drivers inched closer to drivers’ championship leader Tymek Kucharczyk of BVM Racing with two rounds remaining. Yet there was another quartet making headlines: the four new drivers driving for three different teams who featured on the grid.

BVM called up Famularo to line up alongside Kucharczyk, while Motopark recruited F4 graduate Viișoreanu. At Nielsen Racing, two South American drivers – Soldavini and Baptista – joined the team’s three-car operation in place of Gino Trappa and Finley Green.

Alessandro Famularo, BVM Racing

Alessandro Famularo joined Kucharczyk at BVM Racing, taking over the team’s second entry from one-off entrant Preston Lambert, a regular Eurocup-3 competitor. Famularo, conversely, did the opposite, switching from Eurocup-3 to Euroformula Open as part of a three-round entry encompassing Spielberg and the final two rounds of the season at Barcelona and Monza.

The 22-year-old Venezuelan raced sporadically between 2020 and 2022, even making a standalone F3 appearance at Monza at the end of the series’ 2022 season, before taking a two-year break from racing for budgetary reasons. That pause came to an end just days before the Eurocup-3 season opener at the Red Bull Ring this May, when he officially joined Drivex to make his return to racing.

“I’m happy that I’m back,” Famularo said. “The goal was to come back racing and we did it, and now I have to get back in my rhythm.”

Four months later, at the same track, Famularo was racing in different machinery after leaving Eurocup-3, in which he is currently 28th. It wasn’t his first experience with Euroformula Open’s Dallara F3 machinery either. Famularo revealed that he tested the Dallara F317 with Van Amersfoort Racing in 2019 before switching to FR Europe with the Dutch team on a part-time basis in 2020.

“This car is amazing. I drove six years ago and I still love it,” Famularo said. “I’m basically coming back from retirement after not racing for three years, and it’s been very difficult [to re-adapt]. We chose Eurocup-3 before coming here, which was a more complicated car than this one.”

“This is a car that prepares you a lot for the future,” Famularo added, “and that’s our plan, just preparing a lot more and coming back to racing.”

Despite admitting to making a mistake in qualifying and stalling in race one, Famularo stayed out of trouble in his first round, finishing eighth, seventh and sixth in the three races. His results currently put him 15th in points.

Luca Viișoreanu, Team Motopark

Luca Viișoreanu took over Fernando Barrichello’s Motopark car as the Brazilian made his F3 debut at Monza the same weekend. 

The 16-year-old Romanian, who mainly races in Italian F4 and currently sits 20th in points in the series, had a roller-coaster debut weekend in Euroformula Open. After a spin in race one and a collision with Baptista in race two left him no higher than ninth each time, Viișoreanu ended his one-off appearance by finishing seventh in race three.

Getting the opportunity to race in the series via driver manager Horia Totu, a fellow Romanian, Viișoreanu tested with Motopark ahead of the race weekend at Spielberg, but he initially found it hard to adapt to the more powerful car.

“The F4 is a lot slower and it almost has no downforce,” Viișoreanu said. “In the first session I was three seconds off. Now I’m only five tenths off and it looks like I adapted a lot quickly, but it wasn’t easy.”

Viișoreanu had never driven anything faster than an F4 car, and the Dallara 324’s downforce left him stunned.

“The performance of this car is crazy,” Viișoreanu said. “First of all, it has a lot of downforce. It’s on another level, while power and weight are not that different. It’s crazy how the more you push, the more downforce and grip you have.

“This was actually the hardest thing for me to do because at first, I was at the limit of grip and the point where you get more downforce, and that’s the problem. There is a limit, and if you go over that, then it becomes easier [to drive]. You just need to trust the car and send it on your first time.

“I felt the car was at the limit, but when you go over that limit, you find new grip because of the downforce, because the faster you go, the more downforce you get.”

Viișoreanu will return to Italian F4 at Barcelona later this month, with Barrichello returning to Euroformula Open competition at the same venue. Feeder Series understands that Viișoreanu is considering remaining in Euroformula Open for next year but is also weighing a move to Eurocup-3, which will switch to a Dallara-built car similar to Euroformula Open’s for 2026.

Francisco Soldavini, Nielsen Racing

Francisco Soldavini made his return to racing at Spielberg after almost a full year on the sidelines. When the Argentine driver last raced in 2024, he was en route to finishing third in the standings of the Ultimate Cup Series’ Ultimate Formula Cup, a French championship running FRegional machinery.

Having made his car racing debut in late 2022 at the Red Bull Ring in Italian F4, Soldavini never participated in a full season in any championship. He only made one-off appearances in various series prior to his near-full season in Ultimate Cup Series.

“There’s a lot of personal reasons behind it,” Soldavini said. “They’re not that complicated, but most of the time my dad and I agreed that if it’s not worth it to do a race, then we won’t do it. Last year I had done almost all of the Ultimate Cup championship, but I didn’t do the last race even though I was fighting for the championship because we didn’t see the opportunity for me to win it after some situations arose in the previous round. 

“We decided it wasn’t worth it and began testing faster cars. We don’t have a crazy budget and sponsors to test and race all we want, but we make it work, which is the most important thing, and get the most value for every weekend we race in.”

Soldavini said he had offers from teams to race elsewhere on the single-seater ladder, including a drive in F3 for the first four rounds, but turned them down because of school-related commitments.

“We’ve been looking at doing a race for a long time this year, but we had to say no a few times due to other commitments,” Soldavini explained. “I was finishing school this year, among other things. We were offered to do races, not just in Euroformula.

“We could’ve had the chance to do four races at the beginning of the year in F3, but we said no because it had a lot of conflicts with my own personal life. I was graduating the day Monaco was taking place and the other races were in uncomfortable and unfortunate times, so we said no in a shocking turn of events, but I’m glad to be back at the track. It’s been a long time coming.”

Soldavini previously competed at the FR level Europe, but the Dallara 324 – ostensibly at a similar level – proved a different and more challenging beast.

 “The cars are pretty similar in size, power and overall looks, but driving them is a different story,” Soldavini said. “This car is a lot more aerodynamic and it doesn’t come easy learning it. You have to change your driving style and throw everything you learned in FRECA out the window.”

In the three races, Soldavini was largely anonymous, finishing 10th in the first two before taking ninth in race threee. It may not have been his only opportunity to leave his mark on the series, however, as he is considering returning for the Barcelona and Monza rounds.

Ricardo Miranda Baptista, Nielsen Racing

Alongside Soldavini was the least experienced of the four debutants, Ricardo Miranda Baptista. The Brazilian is currently in his first season in cars and is 12th in the overall standings in Brazilian F4. He also made one-off appearances in Spanish F4 and the Formula Winter Series earlier this year.

The 17-year-old acquired his love for motorsport after seeing his father, sports car racer Ricardo Baptista, competing in his native Brazil.

“The dream of starting to race began with me seeing my father race,” Baptista said. “Without a doubt he was an inspiration for me to start racing, and he is also a very experienced GT driver. Even though it’s different from formula, he still has a lot of experience to give me in race craft and other things.”

The elder Baptista currently races in the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup. He normally drives alongside former Japanese F3 driver Rafael Suzuki, but F2 race winner and former Formula E driver Sérgio Sette Câmara joined him for the round at Misano in mid-July. Less than two months later, Sette Câmara was working with the younger Baptista as he made his Euroformula Open debut in Spielberg.

“He has been extremely helpful,” Baptista said. “Sérgio is a very experienced guy. He raced in formulas and it’s a big privilege to have him as my coach for him to pass on his experience to me, his data analysis and everything.”

Baptista’s original plan was to partake in testing days with the Dallara 324. When those weren’t available, he elected to make his debut in the championship with only a couple of practice sessions to prepare.

“We were actually looking to do some tests for Euroformula this week,” Baptista explained, “but they didn’t have test dates available and only had the race. We sat down and decided to race. The intent was for me to take this as a practice and for me to adapt to the car, so we are not aiming for any kind of results. It’s just for me to get experience.”

The Brazilian had a challenging weekend, spinning into retirement in race one before a collision with Viișoreanu took him out of race two. He ended the weekend with a 10th-place finish in race three.

“It has been a really hard experience for me,” Baptista admitted. “Before this weekend, I only had ever driven Formula 4 cars, so I’m still very inexperienced with the formula cars and downforce. 

“This car has a tremendous amount of downforce compared to Formula 4, so it has been hard for me to adapt and to have confidence in high-speed corners, especially in this track which has fast corners that require a lot of confidence.”

Baptista, who will return to Brazilian F4 at the end of the month, also tested Eurocup-3 machinery in the days before his Euroformula Open debut. Whether he will continue racing at the European continental level is not known.

Header photo credit: Euroformula Open Championship