After winning the 2025 Formula Regional Middle East championship, Evan Giltaire had to endure a challenging second year in FR Europe. He sat down with Feeder Series to discuss his season and his late surge at the end of the year.

By Francesca Brusa

In the winter of 2025, Giltaire clinched his second title in single-seaters after being crowned French F4 champion in 2023 in his rookie year in cars. Off the back of that FRegional Middle East title, expectations were sky-high for the young Frenchman as he rejoined the FR Europe grid for his sophomore season in the series.

“For sure I wanted, after the Middle East, to win the championship, and I was looking forward to battle with all those guys later in the battle for the championship,” he told Feeder Series in Monza during the weekend of the season finale. 

Things didn’t turn out as positively for Giltaire. 

The first weekend at Misano, everything unfolded as expected. He finished second in race one after starting fourth and claimed his first victory of the season in race two, leading from lights to flag. At that time, he was first in the standings with a three-point advantage.

“We started well and we confirmed our speed from the Middle East in the first round at Misano with a good victory and a P2, but we were not that fast,” he said.

Then came Spa and Zandvoort, where the ART Grand Prix driver was just short of a podium in both race ones, but failed to score points in both race twos. By then, he was sitting fourth in the championship, 16 points behind leader Freddie Slater, his FR Middle East title rival. 

“We tried our best before the meetings to prepare as much and to maximise everything, but of course you have also the part of chance that comes, and it has not been on our part for the second and third round in Spa and Zandvoort,” he said.

From the fourth round onwards, Giltaire missed out on points only in race one at Imola, when an incident with Hiyu Yamakoshi on lap two put an early end to his hopes of points. But even consistent scoring was no longer enough for him to stay in the title fight, which found new protagonists elsewhere on the grid.

“During the season, we have been struggling on myself. And also the performance of the car has been really tough from round four to eight, and we were not able to find the good speed that we wanted,” he said.

“The championship is not winning every race and finishing on the podium always. Sometimes the car or yourself are not the best and you have to secure the points. If you can do P5, you have to take the P5, but you cannot be P8 or P9 to secure a championship.”

Coming into his second FR Europe season, Giltaire was the highest-placed driver returning from 2024, having finished second among the rookies that year and seventh overall. But as he sought to secure his third championship in three years, his FR Europe title hopes vanished into thin air.

What exactly went wrong? 

“We lost a bit of speed the whole season,” he said. “We worked well during the season and at the end of each weekend, at the real end. We were on the pace of the others, but we had a bit of delay during the free practice and the qualifying. We were only coming back on Sunday and making the step a bit too late in the weekend.”

Giltaire added that he was ‘trying some big stuff at the end of the season to come back’ – and come back he did. A third place came in race two at Hockenheim – where he became last season’s only rookie winner, in the season opener no less – before he took podiums in both races at Monza after clinching one final pole position in qualifying one at the Temple of Speed. 

“I really like the track of Hockenheim. I have good memories here and it has been a good weekend overall,” he said. “Honestly, it’s a good result that we did P4 and P3, but we deserved much better than this. I think the car was able to make double pole and to for sure win a race, the second race, and to finish P2 because Slater was really fast in race one. But we deserved both podium and one victory, and at the end, on my side, I didn’t do the job compared to what I did well this year.”

With this final 60-point haul from the last two rounds, Giltaire – who turns 19 today – secured fifth in the overall standings with 185 points to his name. Results aside, there’s something more important that he will take away from this FR Europe season. 

“To work still as a family and to work harder than what I did,” he said. “I don’t say that I didn’t work that much this season, but I think talent and speed is not enough, and you have to work a lot and to anticipate the bad stuff and to be ready on that and to not make any mistakes.”

Last weekend, Giltaire was at the Macau Grand Prix to compete in this year’s FR World Cup for what was potentially his final outing in an FRegional car. After starting from third on the grid in the qualifying race and gaining a place on the opening lap, he had to settle for fourth as Pinnacle Motorsport’s Mari Boya and Théophile Naël passed him mid-race. In the main race, he lost a further two positions and slid down to sixth. 

“Macau can change your life if you win it, even if you finish on the podium. It depends on who is the name on it,” Giltaire told Feeder Series in Macau on Saturday. “When you can win a race at Macau, and in front of such big names like Freddie Slater, [Matteo] De Palo, all the big guys who are in FRECA, it can change your life, for sure. Teams can look at it quite easily compared to some races in FRECA.”

Despite the strong showing at the Guia Circuit, Giltaire said his future remained as undecided as it was when we first spoke to him in Monza.

“We have to wait and see to take the decision. We have a lot of things on the table, and we will take our decision as soon as possible,” he said in Macau.

Additional reporting by Michael McClure

Header photo credit: Alex Galli