It was not unexpected to see the return of Team Motopark and BVM Racing on this year’s Euroformula Open grid, but there was a surprise single-car entry appearing before the pre-season tests. French squad Neri Autosport made their debut in the series this year with Belgian driver Aaron Ferrazzano. Where does the team come from, and where are they going from here?

By Perceval Wolff-Taffus

Arriving in the series with a single car against championship-winning teams, Neri Autosport faced a challenge that was, by any metric, highly ambitious. Yet the little French team, founded by Jean-Luc Neri, were the surprises of the opening round in Portimão with a top-five finish on debut.

“I already knew in what series I wanted to go,” Neri told Feeder Series before the start of the season. “Euroformula Open is a championship where a privateer, a little team like us, can race. In other series, FREC, Eurocup-3, it costs a lot of money, and the slots are already taken. It’s a very close, very exclusive world that costs a lot of money for drivers but also for the teams who want to take part. EFO was the only series where we could go.”

While its grids have grown from the six-car lows seen in 2024, the final year with the previous car, Euroformula Open remains Motopark’s playground. The German team are running seven drivers in their 2026 line-up, while Neri Autosport, based in Belfort in north-eastern France, have only one. Does this imbalance faze them? 

“My goal is not to create a team like a multinational. It doesn’t interest me. The goal is to stay small and do something precise and tailored around a driver. We adapt to the drivers’ budget, to do the best work possible and bring the driver up to the highest level possible,” Neri said.

“It’s a bit like David and Goliath. We already know it. We will surely be the team with the smallest budget. But last year, BVM Racing won with the driver that might have had the smallest budget [Tymek Kucharczyk]. It was a team that was only working with him [as a full-time driver], and I think that is very important.”

Neri isn’t exactly starting from scratch. Inasmuch as the team is discovering international junior formulae, they have already raced in single-seaters in Austria and in Italy with gentlemen drivers – including Neri himself.

“I started motorsport 40 years ago. I was a mechanic. I was 20 years old, and I used to work in a Citroën’s subsidiary in Paris that entered a Visa 1000 Pistes in the French rally championship. I loved it,” he said.

“Alongside that, I used to do motorsport as a driver. I started in prototypes, then I did hill climbing… then I discovered single-seaters at the French Circuit Cup in 2015. That is when I realised I wanted to do only that.”

Neri Autosport was then founded the year after. “I drove in Italy in the F2000 Italian Trophy, which is the most famous Italian single-seater series. I also did the Drexler Cup, which is the equivalent in Austria. And I engaged other drivers too.

“By roaming around in the paddocks in Italy, I met a lot of people. There was a team named Ferrazzano that was racing in historical Porsche races. I got along very well with Andrea Ferrazzano, who talked to me about his son Aaron. We have been talking about it for two years, and it really materialised at the end of last year.”

The Belgian driver will discover the world of high-level junior formulae after taking several titles in karting, such as the 2022 IAME Benelux X30 Junior category crown in front of the likes of Thibaut Ramaekers and Noah Monteiro. He also won the IAME Eurocup title in the X30 Senior class in 2024, which gave him the financial boost he needed to race in single-seaters in 2025.

“Budget was always an issue for single-seaters. It was difficult to make the step up from karting. But by winning IAME Eurocup, I got help to jump up directly to the Hoosier Formula Cup, with a Formula Regional car,” Ferrazzano explained. 

“Coming from karting, not doing F4, I had to adapt to the car, so I learned a lot during this year, and this will help for what is coming. The long-term plan is to stay in single-seaters, even though budgets are very important. We will first see how 2026 goes, try to perform and to show ourselves.”

Even though gentlemen drivers make up a significant part of the Formula Cup, several young drivers, including Laurens Van Hoepen and Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak have shined in the series housed under the Ultimate Cup European Series umbrella. Driving the Tatuus F3 T-318 chassis used until last year in FRegional Europe, Ferrazzano added himself to that list by finishing as the runner-up with three race wins, behind only Nano López of Argentina. 

The Wallonia native also enjoyed success during the winter with his new squad, Neri Autosport, driving the same car in the French Circuit Cup at Nogaro at the start of March.

“It was a little weekend of preparation, to discover the team, gain some mileage, and get prepared for Euroformula,” he said. “The goal is to grow together.”

The team will have ‘four or five people’ around their driver on Euroformula Open race weekends, Neri says. While Neri’s objectives – to learn and grow – are similar to Ferrazzano’s, he also hopes to use his connections from a decade in the industry to push the team upwards.

“I had several Dallara chassis with the F2000, so I know well people at Dallara, spare parts suppliers, et cetera,” Neri explained. “It is sure we won’t be the fastest right from the start, but we know where to find the people to help us to go forward.”

Neri’s latest project was built around Ferrazzano, but the team wants to stay in the series in the long term too.

“We want to stay here for several years. Now, we can imagine other projects for other drivers, but one at a time is the idea,” Neri said. “It’s not impossible that next year, we will take a second driver if we manage to grow enough so that we can have two drivers, to support them, et cetera. But we won’t go above two.”

Header photo credit: Fotospeedy / GT Sport