After coming out on top in the Eurocup-4 Spanish Winter Championship earlier in the year, Thomas Strauven dominated the main Spanish F4 season to win his second title of 2025 at the penultimate round at Valencia. Feeder Series spoke to the 17-year-old during the season finale at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya about his success.

By Seb Tirado

The Griffin Core by Campos driver secured the title in the opening race at Valencia with five races to spare, matching the record for the earliest-crowned champion with inaugural victor Richard Verschoor in 2016. He took 10 victories and seven further podiums on his way to the title along with 12 fastest laps and 10 pole positions, ultimately finishing 157 points ahead of runner-up Ean Eyckmans.

Eleven of Strauven’s podiums came from a streak that lasted from the final race of the opening round at Aragón to the first race at Jerez, the longest since 2022 champion Nikola Tsolov’s 11-race run of podiums. As in the winter series, he only had one non-score during the season, which came in the race immediately before his podium streak began. In that second race at Aragón, he placed 34th after sustaining a puncture in an incident with Tecnicar’s Andrej Petrović and being forced to pit.

“[It was] amazing not to just win the championship, but to do it in Valencia made it more special because [for] Campos Racing it’s their home track,” Strauven told Feeder Series. “Obviously we didn’t get the three out of three [in Valencia], but we maximised everything we got.”

In that round, he won the first two races from pole but had to settle for second place in race three after losing the lead to eventual race winner René Lammers going into the first turn. 

The Belgian driver did achieve a hat-trick in the third round of the season at Portimão, a weekend he considered the highlight of his season. He took two lights-to-flag victories from pole in races one and two and won the final race of the weekend from second on the grid.

“Winning three out of three was amazing,” Strauven said. “I tried to do it again in Valencia, which just didn’t work out.” 

He may not have taken a second hat-trick, but Strauven led Griffin Core by Campos to a season-high 105-point haul that weekend. They then secured the Spanish F4 teams’ title in the first race at Barcelona after comfortably taking the inaugural Eurocup-4 title earlier in the year. Strauven and his teammate Jan Przyrowski scored all 554 points for Griffin Core, who took their first Spanish F4 title and the first for the wider Campos operation since 2022.

“Obviously we wanted to win everything this year, and I think from winter testing I knew our pace was quite okay,” Strauven said. “We took the championship after race one by finishing 1-2 in style again, which was a very nice way to take the championship for the team and for us as drivers.”

Strauven finished fifth in race two and fourth in race three to score a total of 392 points. This meant he was eight points shy of the record of 400 points scored by Tsolov in his championship year, something the Belgian driver was aiming to surpass.

As Strauven revealed back in March, he is set to move up to Campos’ Eurocup-3 squad next year. Campos took both titles in the series’ first season in 2023, while Christian Ho won the drivers’ championship for the team in 2024.

“Obviously I will be a rookie, but my goal is again to try to win the championship,” he said. “We improved a lot this year and I think we did a good job.”

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency