Following his 2024 campaign in Brazilian Formula 4, Gino Trappa upped the stakes for 2025, heading to Europe for a double program in Spanish F4 and F4 CEZ and ultimately becoming the champion in the latter. Feeder Series caught up with the Argentine driver last month at the Macau Grand Prix to talk about his journey to the title and what he hopes to achieve from here. 

By Maciej Jackiewicz

After starting his karting career in 2022, Trappa made the switch to formula cars in 2024. That year, he competed in Brazilian F4 with Bassani Racing as the only non-Brazilian driver in the series. He ended the year in fifth with one win to his name, which he took in the second round of the season at Interlagos.

That year, he also made his European debut, competing in the Spanish F4 round at Valencia with the DXR by Drivex squad. It marked the start of a partnership with Drivex that has continued through this year.

For the 2025 season, Trappa moved to Madrid to compete full-time in European championships. This came at a cost, as he was constantly on the other side of the globe relative to his family.

“When I was in Brazil, I stayed in Buenos Aires,” he said.” I wanted one more year to stay with my family and this year, actually last year, I moved to Madrid alone. I’m not living with my family, but I can say we have luck with the financial aspect and my family is quite able to come here like one, every two months to visit me. For example, here in Macau, they’re here with me.”

His first full year in Europe began with two winter championships: the Formula Winter Series with Van Amersfoort Racing and the Eurocup-4 Spanish Winter Championship with Drivex. 

Apart from racing in Spain, Trappa competed in the third season of F4 CEZ, a championship based in the Czech Republic that races across Central Europe. He was the first South American to compete in the championship full-time, and there were plenty of reasons he chose it.

“It was the most affordable championship regulated by the FIA in the formula, single-seaters path, so that was a really big help,” he said. “I had already signed for my year in Spanish F4, and I wanted to have more time on track without doing a lot of testing because for me, I always push myself more in the racing weekends than in the test days. They are super important, but it was a very good championship to do while doing Spanish F4.

“Also, one of the main things was that it was the only F4 championship that didn’t have a race weekend at the same time as Spanish F4, so I was able to do all the races.”

In F4 CEZ, Trappa competed with Jenzer Motorsport, who had dominated the championship in prior seasons. From the start, it was clear that he was one of the main contenders for the overall crown. In the first six races, all held at the Red Bull Ring, he stood on the podium four times, winning twice in the second round. 

The following two rounds were also good for the 17-year-old. At the green Salzburgring, he stood on the podium in all of the races, and at the fast Autodrom Most, he won two out of three races. By that point in the championship, he already had a 54-point gap over second-placed Max Karhan. 

Trappa said his best round was the penultimate one at the Slovakia Ring. The Jenzer Motorsport driver originally won race one but dropped to 12th after receiving a five-second penalty for braking hard when the lights on the safety car went out.

“I didn’t know the track, and it really surprised me. I loved the track and I was super fast and I was super close to achieving one of my goals, that was being able to go on the podium in all the races of the weekend.” he said. “I was more than capable of doing it, but they give me a penalty – quite crazy – under the safety car, and the safety car never went out, so it was a crazy penalty. They do it, I think, to keep the championship alive.

“For my side, it was a super difficult weekend. That was also something very good because it was really tough for me, knowing I was super strong and getting a penalty in race on that compromised not only the victory in race one that I was leading [by] 10 seconds but also took the penalty in race two, race three. I was starting from the outside of the top 10 for the races where I was to start from P1.”

Despite this penalty and subsequent worse positions on the starting grid for the following races, Trappa won the third race of the weekend with a comeback drive from 12th on the grid. That event – and his F4 CEZ season as a whole – taught him important lessons about resilience.

“You really need to wait until the race, because nothing is 100 per cent decided until the last lap, until you cross the finish line. Having the mentality that you don’t look in the past and only focus on the next step, that is something that really helped me,” he said. “Saying it is easy, but when you are in the moment, it’s difficult. You are always in the past, but you really need to focus into the future, and that is something that can really help me throughout my career.”

Before the last round at Brno, his gap over Karhan in second was 35 points. Despite not scoring a single podium in the season finale, Trappa clinched the title by nine points. With that, he became the first F4 CEZ champion from outside of Europe.

Alongside F4 CEZ, Trappa competed in Spanish F4 with Drivex. Facing a larger and stronger grid, Trappa scored on six occasions and wound up 16th in the drivers’ standings with 11 points, making him Drivex’s second-highest-placed competitor. He competed in six out of seven rounds of the season, missing the finale at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in November to take part in the invite-only FIA F4 World Cup in Macau.

Trappa, the event’s only South American participant, recovered from last to ninth in the main race at Macau after crashes and mechanical problems beleaguered him in the first three days of running.

Although both of the main championships Trappa contested use the Tatuus F4-T421 chassis, they use different tyres, with Spanish F4 racing on Hankooks and F4 CEZ on Pirellis. The Macau event uses Pirellis and the Ligier JS F422 chassis. This variance gave Trappa a challenge as he switched back and forth between championships.

“Something I have always liked to do is having the challenge of changing my driving style because I think it’s something that really helps the level of the driver, being able to adapt to different styles,” he said.  

“I grew a lot during the year. So that was one thing. Another thing [is] I was ashamed of the last round in the Spanish championship because I was really having good expectations for the weekend. In the collective test there, I was super good, so I think it was very possible, a top five during the races,” he added.

Top-five finishes were a regular occurrence for Trappa last year in F4 Brazil, which – like F4 CEZ – has grid sizes in the teens and a generally lower level. Spanish F4 presents a more robust challenge, one more representative of the highest level of competition on offer in Europe. It’s a sacrifice not everyone is willing to make.

“Being here in Europe is super tough, and then the pinnacle of motorsport, in Europe, is where the motorsport has the greatest level,” he said. “When you have the possibility to be successful in your country without being unfortunate, because you can stay near your family, your friends, that is a big point also for a lot of people. Because at the end, it’s not only motorsport in life.

“It’s not good or bad, but you need to leave behind a lot of important things. A lot of people put it in the balance about personal life and motorsport life, and personal life wins. It’s okay for me. [Going to Europe] was a great decision.”

Trappa’s relatives in motorsport were among those who stayed home in Argentina, a country known for its huge passion for motorsport. While it boasts domestic single-seater series in Fórmula 2 Argentina and Fórmula Nacional Argentina and formerly had an F4 series too, the South American nation’s most popular category by far is the touring car championship Turismo Carretera. Trappa’s uncle, Camilo Trappa, competes in the Turismo Carretera 2000, Turismo Carretera’s feeder championship, and sits fifth in the standings.

Gino cites Camilo as his inspiration to begin racing – as the person who walked so he could fly. And now, the 17-year-old has had an even clearer path to follow thanks to one of his compatriots.

When Trappa won F4 CEZ, he became the first South American driver to have won an FIA-certified F4 championship title in Europe since Franco Colapinto took the Spanish F4 crown in 2019 – with Drivex, no less. Colapinto then spent two years at the FRegional level, two years in F3 and a partial season in F2 before making his F1 debut with Williams Racing. In doing so, he became the first Argentine to race in F1 since Gastón Mazzacane did so in 2001.

Trappa says that the popularity of Colapinto – who now races for Alpine – has helped him and other South American drivers in pursuing their own dreams in motorsport.

“When Franco reached F1, there was a very, very big boom in all aspects for not only Argentina – obviously mainly Argentina – but for all of South America, like for Brazil, Chile and all the countries in South America, and also Mexico,” Trappa said. “For me and other racers from Argentina, we really had open doors, like a lot of doors open, because of him for sponsors.”

The young Argentine still has a long road ahead to pursue a professional career. For now, he’s aiming to emulate what Colapinto himself did in 2022 and 2023, a few years after his F4 title.

“I always like to say that I would love to – for the coming three, four years – be in F3 leading the races,” Trappa said. “It has been a dream of mine since I started motorsport. I always looked forward to competing in F3. I really love the series. I mean, I could be more than happy from achieving that dream, so hopefully we’ll be there.”

In July 2025, Trappa took a big step toward F3 by competing in the Euroformula Open round at Circuit Paul Ricard with Nielsen Racing, driving a car based on F3 machinery of old. He also tested the series’ Dallara 324 in October at Monza, this time with Motopark. In other tests with Van Amersfoort Racing and Drivex over the summer and fall, he has driven the Tatuus F3 T-318 used in FRegional series.

Interview by Michael McClure

Header photo credit: Moritz Sachsenheimer