Oleksandr Bondarev became the first Ukrainian single-seater champion when he won the UAE4 Series title last month, but despite his dominant season, his success hasn’t always come easy. He spoke to Feeder Series about how he bounced back from a tough 2025 to make it to this point. 

By Calla Kra-Caskey

By the numbers, the title-deciding final round in Qatar was the worst of Oleksandr Bondarev’s UAE4 campaign. It was the first weekend he failed to add to his championship lead and the only weekend in which he didn’t take at least one win in the Formula 4–spec winter series. The final qualifying of the four-round season was the sole time the 16-year-old Prema Racing driver qualified outside of the top three. 

But by any standards other than the remarkably high ones Bondarev set through the first three rounds, he finished the season strong. He managed a best of second in the first race, with seventh- and fifth-place finishes on Friday – and his 34-point haul from those results alone would’ve been enough to secure him 11th in the 45-person championship. 

Maybe that’s why he was so assured when he spoke to Feeder Series ahead of the final round in Qatar. 

“I’m quite confident,” he said of his ability to secure the title. “I extended my advantage in the championship in all three rounds, so it just shows that the consistency and the pace we had in the race especially was really, really good.”

Bondarev’s competitors were no slouches either. His main rival for the title was Andy Consani of the Mercedes Junior Team and R-ace GP. Consani stood on the rostrum alongside Bondarev for all seven of the Prema driver’s podium finishes – Bondarev was ahead five of those times – and made an additional two visits without Bondarev present. He was the one cutting into Bondarev’s lead in the final round, getting the gap down to eight points with two wins and a non-finish – although he ultimately came up short. 

It’s easy to trace Bondarev’s success back further than the first round of UAE4. Last December, he participated in the second round of Formula Trophy, supporting the final F1 round in Abu Dhabi. He absolutely dominated the weekend, taking both pole positions, both victories and both fastest laps. 

This year, too, he looked particularly strong in Abu Dhabi. Across the series’ first two rounds at the Yas Marina circuit, he took two of four pole positions and three of six victories. 

“I just learned how to be fast there,” he said when pressed on his Abu Dhabi success. “It’s quite a technical track. Everyone’s always really close, so getting the best driving out of it is really important.”

Despite taking five victories around the circuit in December and January, Bondarev pins his best moment of the season to Dubai, the UAE4 season’s third event. 

At the start of the round, it was R-ace GP’s Kenzo Craigie who looked to have stolen the show. The Mercedes-backed rookie took both pole positions, the first and second of his young career, and cruised to victory ahead of Bondarev in the first race. Bondarev climbed from 11th to fourth in the reverse-grid race. Then, lining up behind Craigie in once again for race three, he made a daring first-corner overtake and held on to beat the Briton by just eight tenths of a second. 

“We didn’t quite have the pace in qualifying as we expected,” he said. “I knew that probably with someone who probably had a bit more pace than me that weekend, it would have been really difficult to overtake after that. So getting the move in T1 and being able to control the race from the front was a really nice moment in the championship.” 

It’s a moment Bondarev attributes to his experience – and one that ties his disappointing first full year in single-seaters to a second year he hopes will be much stronger. 

“You can take stuff from 2025 where I was fighting with some of the older guys and they kind of beat me up, but just on racecraft, not on pure pace,” he said. “You feel a bit more confident in the car to make the overtakes and stuff.”

Bondarev had high expectations going into 2025, his first full year in single-seaters. He signed to the Williams driver academy in 2023 after winning the FIA Karting European Championship in the OK-Junior category. He spent 2024 split between senior karting  – finding success in the WSK series but struggling in the FIA European and world championships – and his first single-seater races in the final two rounds of Italian F4. 

In 2025, he started the year off in F4 Middle East, UAE4’s predecessor, scoring regular points to finish 12th overall. He then moved on to Italian F4, in which he was 10th, and E4, in which he was ninth. Fair results, but certainly disappointing considering the hype around him. 

“The year last year was not fantastic, let’s say. There were a lot of difficult moments that obviously happened to a lot of drivers in their first year in cars, but they happened a bit too frequently for me,” Bondarev said. 

“On TV, it might seem like it’s just driving and stays quite consistent throughout the year, but every race you learn something new. And especially for me, it wasn’t as easy.” 

It wasn’t until August that he would take his first single-seater victory, scoring a pole, win and fastest lap in the last race of the Italian F4 weekend in Imola. Two months later, he took his second podium by finishing third in the final race of the season in Misano. 

“I didn’t really have the best pace except for probably Imola,” he said. “I had to learn all the stuff regarding racecraft, and at the start of Italian F4, it was pretty bad. And then towards the end, I started improving quite fast. It was just a very big learning year for me, and now I’m happy to use all these learnings to fight for a championship this year.”

Despite his success in UAE4, Bondarev said there were still areas of his craft that he wanted to improve. 

“Starts haven’t been amazing so far in the UAE4,” he reflected. “That’s probably something I’ll keep working on, but starts is something you can always improve. I think tyre management made a big step compared to last year, but again, it’s something that if you can master it, you’ll be really, really strong. 

“You can always keep improving. Even if you go pole in quali by a big margin, you still know that there are places in the lap that you could have done better. So just keep improving, keep getting those 1 per cent right, and yeah, in the end, that will add up.”

Another thing UAE4 taught him, Bondarev said, was how to deal with pressure. He entered UAE4 as a title favorite, an expectation that can sit heavily on a driver’s shoulders. He’ll face similar when he returns to Italian F4. 

That’s already a lot for most drivers to handle, but Bondarev has two additional entities to represent: the Williams F1 Team and his home country of Ukraine. The former is simpler than the latter. 

“Representing Williams is always a bit of a pressure because you’re representing an F1 team,” he said. “You need to show results and show why you’re there and to show that you can get to Formula 1.”

“Representing Ukraine is something that…” he started. 

“Every time I win a race, it helps the country as well because they’re in a really difficult situation right now with the [Russo-Ukrainian] war. I feel like I will represent Ukraine on my stage, you know, and hopefully I can get this championship over the line to get to show Williams and Ukraine what I can do.”

Get it over the line he did. Bringing his car home in fifth place in the final race, Bondarev became his home country’s first single-seater champion. He has just two months and a flight to Italy before it’s time to try to do it again. 

Header photo credit: UAE4 Series