After its planned winter 2025 season never got off the ground, Formula 4 Saudi Arabia will return to action this weekend in Bahrain under a new operations model for its second season and a fresh selection of drivers. Feeder Series tells you everything you need to know about the upcoming season of the F4 Saudi Arabian Championship.

By Marco Albertini

The first season of the F4 Saudi Arabian Championship took place more than a year ago, and Federico Al Rifai defeated Andrej Petrović by 33 points.

The championship was centrally run by Meritus.GP at the time, but it has been relaunched with a new operations team. Hitech will run all the cars and disburse a cumulative prize fund of $100,000 US. The series’ promoter remains Saudi automotive company Altawkilat.

The series’ 14 drivers will be organised into seven pairs, each one named for a different company. Saudi entities aStop, Jaco, Zahid, Caraagy and Peax are represented alongside American auto services company Valvoline and Thai-Austrian energy drinks brand Red Bull, which fields two juniors in the series.

The calendar

The 2025 season will feature the same number of championship rounds as last year and will take place in fall rather than running from winter to spring. Bahrain will host the first two rounds after only appearing as a non-championship round in late 2023, while three rounds at Jeddah will close out the season, with the first two being held within a six-day span.

Gone are the rounds at Kuwait and Lusail, which held the first two championship events in 2024 as well as the second non-championship trophy round in February.

The second Bahrain round and first Jeddah round will take place midweek.

• Round 1: Bahrain International Circuit (11–12 October)
• Round 2: Bahrain International Circuit (15–16 October)
• Round 3: Jeddah Corniche Circuit (10–11 November)
• Round 4: Jeddah Corniche Circuit (14–15 November)
• Round 5: Jeddah Corniche Circuit (5–6 December)

The format

Every weekend will feature a two-day format, with a lone 30-minute practice session at the beginning of each day followed by a 20-minute qualifying session and a 25-minute race.

Where to watch

Races will be streamed by Saudi F4 on Jaco. They will also be streamed in German on Motorsport TV Deutschland, as they were in 2024.

The drivers

British F4 race winner Adam Al Azhari (#12, Valvoline) will continue in F4 competition for the rest of 2025. The 16-year-old Emirati was sixth in the British F4 standings with three wins to his name. He was 10th in F4 Middle East earlier this winter.

In her second year in F4 competition, Nina Gademan (#3, Caraagy) will return to Hitech-run machinery for her fourth championship in 2025. The Alpine-backed Dutch driver mainly races for Prema in F1 Academy, in which she won at Zandvoort on her 22nd birthday and currently sits sixth in points. Gademan raced with Hitech over the winter in the Formula Winter Series, becoming the only female driver to score points with five top-10 finishes. She also joined the team for her home British F4 round as well as the non-points British Grand Prix support races. 

Gademan was the first to be announced for the series along with reigning GB4 champion Ary Bansal, who is continuing down the F4 route. The 15-year-old Indian has also made appearances in the British F4 and E4 championships, most notably taking the Challenge Cup title in the former by 21.5 points over Ella Lloyd. He will miss the opening round to compete in the Italian F4 finale with US Racing.

Emirati-British driver Theo Palmer (#23, Jaco), who also raced in British F4 this year, was a late addition to the F4 Saudi Arabia grid. In his first season in single-seaters, Palmer, who missed the first four races because he had yet to turn 15, finished 18th in the British F4 standings with a best result of sixth.

Megan Bruce (#9, Caraagy), who finished 20th overall in GB4 this year with KMR Sport, will continue her overseas racing journey in F4 Saudi Arabia. The 21-year-old Briton first raced outside her home country in the F1 Academy Singapore round last weekend as a stand-in for the injured Aiva Anagnostiadis. That opportunity caused her to miss the season finale of GB4, in which she had been on course to finish as the best-placed female driver.

The driver who beat her to the honours was instead Ava Dobson (#55, Peax), who finished 19th overall. Dobson inherited her maiden single-seater podium in race two in the season-ending round at Donington Park, which enabled her to leapfrog Bruce. The 17-year-old American also made a wild card appearance in F1 Academy at the rain-affected Miami round.

A third previous wild card also joins the series in the form of Farah Al Yousef (#4, Valvoline), who will return to F4 competition after almost half a year of sitting on the sidelines. Outside of her wild card appearance in Jeddah in April, the 23-year-old Saudi Arabian last competed in this winter’s F4 Middle East Championship, taking a best result of 19th and ending the year 30th in points.

Al Yousef is one of three Saudi Arabians announced for the championship, but she is not the only one with prior single-seater experience. Sixteen-year-old Abdullah Ayman Kamel (#99, aStop) comes to the series at the end of his first year in single-seaters. He currently sits 25th in the E4 points after two rounds with AKM Motorsport after having raced for Xcel Motorsport in F4 Middle East earlier this year, finishing 26th overall.

The third Saudi Arabia native, Faris Organji (#11, Jaco), is one of the seven drivers making their single-seater debuts. Organji moves up to cars from local karting at the Dubai Kartdrome, including in the Sodi W Series.

Of the newcomers, few come with more anticipation than Chiara Bättig (#89, Red Bull), 15. The Swiss driver, signed to the Red Bull Junior Team over the summer, has produced solid runs in her first year in senior karting, finishing 15th in the FIA Karting European Championship, and currently sits second in the Champions of the Future Academy Program.

Fellow Red Bull junior Scott Kin Lindblom (#5, Red Bull) will also make his single-seater debut this weekend, though he is one of several to have raced prior in cars. This year, the 15-year-old Swede stepped up from karts to the Ginetta Junior Championship, finishing fourth in the standings with nine podiums to his name. He has been on an extensive testing programme over the summer.

Also making her single-seater debut but with previous racing experience is Rachel Robertson (#56, aStop) of Scotland. The 18-year-old participated in the F1 Academy rookie test at Navarra last month, placing fifth in both sessions. In her first season in car racing, Robertson competed in the Radical Cup UK and finished third in the points with four podiums to her name.

Maltese karter Jacob Micallef (#8, Zahid) will make the step-up to single-seaters this weekend after having competed in international karting since 2022. The 15-year-old raced in senior karts this year, taking a win in the Jesolo round of the Champions of the Future Academy Program as well as podiums at the Viterbo round of the FIA Karting European Championship and the Wackersdorf round of the IAME Euro Series.

One of his rivals on the karting scene is Thibaut Ramaekers (#1, Zahid), the third karter to make his single-seater debut in the F4 Saudi Arabian Championship. The 15-year-old Belgian most recently won the FIA Karting World Championship in the OK class in September, though his CV also includes runner-up finishes in the OK class of the 2024 and 2025 Champions of the Future Euro Series as well as the 2023 FIA Karting European Championship title in OK Junior.

Williams Sim Racing ambassador Kit Belofsky (#6, Peax) will also step up to F4 Saudi Arabia this weekend after testing GB4 machinery with Arden earlier this year. The 15-year-old Briton last raced in karts in the 2024 WSK Final Cup in OK Senior, having finished fourth in the FIA Karting World Championship in OK Junior earlier that year. He also won the 2022 IAME Winter Cup in X30 Mini.

Header photo credit: F4 Saudi Arabian Championship