Yuval Rosen went from being waitlisted for the Feed Racing scholarship shootout to winning it all two months later. Feeder Series spoke to the 19-year-old about how he defeated karting champions despite having little experience of his own to earn himself a fully funded French F4 seat for 2026 last week in Magny-Cours.

By Perceval Wolff-Taffus 

“You were on the waiting list until July!” said Thibault Larue, Feed Racing’s communications director, with a laugh while chatting with Yuval Rosen in the French F4 paddock in Le Mans last Friday. 

Twenty-four hours earlier, Rosen won the Volant Feed Racing, becoming the most surprising winner in the short history of Jacques Villeneuve and Patrick Lemarié’s racing school.

“One guy cancelled for one of the last training courses and we got Yuval on the waiting list,” Larue explained. “I remember calling Patrick about him. We had no idea who this guy was. He used to do sim racing, so it’s a type of profile we usually like. Julien Soenen was runner-up in 2022; Thomas Scibilia was third in 2021. So we were happy to welcome one more sim racer.”

Several weeks later, Rosen qualified for the final despite a spin during his run on fresh tyres. He faced drivers with much more experience of karting at an international level, so what were his expectations?

“I was confident, but you always have doubts, because the other drivers are all so good, and they showed it during semi-finals,” Rosen said. “I knew I had a chance. I knew I was fast, but then I needed to see how the other guys stuck up against me. And the beginning of the final was a bit rough for me. I was not very quick.”

As often occurs in the Feed Racing finals, rain played a key role, with changing conditions all through the day. This destabilised several drivers, including Rosen, who had a spin at the start of the finals.

“There is no rain on RaceRoom. I did a bit of rain practising on iRacing, and I’ve also driven one karting race in the rain and a few practice sessions,” he said. “I didn’t have a lot of practical experience, but I still had a little. And I knew the theory really well. I have studied it.”

Rosen, who turned 19 on the day before the finals, had been last of the six competitors in the final two free practice sessions, but he progressed during qualifying, finishing third out of six. That meant he would be challenged in the first duel by Clément Outran, fourth in qualifying but also the biggest favourite before the final. Only one could directly qualify.

Rosen had a spin on his run and ultimately lost out to Outran. Still, the Israeli driver’s raw speed impressed the jury, composed of 1997 F1 champion Villeneuve, Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours director Serge Saulnier, French F4 sporting director Chloé Blossier and Eurocup-3 driver Jules Caranta.

Following a unanimous decision from the jury, Rosen was drafted to join the three winners of the first duels. He then beat Truly Adams by a four-tenth margin to qualify for the final duel against the same Outran who had defeated him earlier in the final.

This time, Rosen didn’t leave the Frenchman with any chance of winning, pulling an impressive seven-tenth margin over Outran on the average of his best three laps.  

“It was really tough for me at the beginning of the final. I was quite far. But I started getting on pace, learning new stuff, how to drive fast in the rain,” he said. “The win was during the rain, so we managed to learn that quickly. I’m really proud of that.”

What probably made the biggest difference on his rivals was Rosen’s knowledge – not in racing but in informatics.

“My day job is I’m a software developer, so I come from this world. I know how to work with computers, how to write what I need,” he said. “Feed Racing sends us the onboard videos. These videos have the front brake traces on them, the speed trace on them, so I can extract the data out of this. I wrote some code which was frame by frame from the video, extracted the front brake and speed positions from the bars on the video, and it just puts it on a graph.

“So I actually have telemetry, and using that was super helpful in all the prefinal stages. And in the final itself, I think it was a huge advantage.”

Rosen is not only a sim racer. He also has some experience of karting himself, being a runner-up in the Israeli Rotax Senior karting championship in 2023. Last year, he entered two rounds of the Central European Rotax Max championship, both held at Třinec in Czechia.

“In the first one, I was in the midfield around P20. It was my first time on a big track – because the tracks in Israel are nothing like those you know in Europe – so I was just trying to get used to all of this,” he said.

“In the second weekend, rain started to show up a little and I was consistently staying within the top seven. I was pretty happy with it. But then during the penultimate practice session, I actually broke my hand, so I didn’t go on to compete that second weekend.”

Feed Racing was Rosen’s only chance for a career in motorsport. He was supposed to be completing military service in accordance with Israeli law, which states that all male citizens 18 or older who are Jewish, Druze or Circassian must be conscripted to serve for a minimum of two years and eight months in the Israel Defense Forces.

“It’s mandatory. I was supposed to join the army in end of July and then I escaped that one. And now because I won Feed, I will get an athlete position in the army, so I don’t really have to do it and I can keep on competing,” Rosen said.

“Now I’m going to work really hard to create leverage so that this Feed Racing win attracts sponsors.”

By winning the Volant Feed Racing, Rosen is the first driver officially confirmed for next year’s French F4 grid.

“I still know that I have a lot more to learn,” he added. “That’s the main thing I want to really develop next year – keep progressing, keep pushing to get better and better so I can win races. That’s the goal.”

By starting his single-seater career at 19 years old, Rosen will certainly be one of the championship’s oldest drivers, as was 2022 Feed Racing winner Kevin Foster, who finished third in French F4 the next year, and 2024 Feed Racing winner Malo Bolliet. Given that many of his soon-to-be rivals are 15 or 16, is his age on his mind at all?

“I get the concern, but I think that if the results are good enough, they will speak for themselves. Hopefully the age won’t be a big factor,” he said.

“If you could give me an infinite budget right now and I can choose wherever I want to compete, I would probably be in something like WEC, IMSA, or GT3 and stuff like that. But just from Feed, I think I’ll just keep progressing up, hopefully keep the momentum going wherever it takes me.”

Header photo credit: FEED Racing