When F4 Saudi Arabia restarted late last year, it did so with little public communication or fanfare. One thrilling season later, several of its 2025 graduates have taken the British F4 world by storm, bolstered by their experience in the sands and drylands of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Feeder Series spoke to Kit Belofsky, Lewis Wherrell and Scott Kin Lindblom over summer about their experiences in both series.

By Mitchell Ash

On 11 October 2025, 14 young drivers waited in their cars in the Bahraini desert, 25 minutes of racing ahead of them. All were new to the circuit they were set to tackle; half had never competed in a single-seater before. Twelve laps later, after an intense five-way battle for the lead that miraculously resulted in no retirements, one of those rookies emerged victorious.

“Everything kind of came together properly,” said race winner Kit Belofsky, who was crowned champion of the 2025 F4 Saudi Arabian Championship almost two months later. “I was impressed with the pace I did have, since before that I literally only did one day in an F4 car, in the wet at Pembrey.”

A rainy track day at an FIA Grade 4 circuit in Wales is a far cry from the 5.412-kilometre Bahrain International Circuit that has hosted 21 F1 grands prix to date, but Belofsky adapted quickly. From eighth in free practice, he qualified third, then passed fellow rookie Scott Kin Lindblom and the more experienced Theo Palmer during the race to take his maiden victory. 

It was an impressive debut for someone who hadn’t competed at all for 11 months. After a successful karting career that culminated in fourth place at the 2024 FIA Karting World Championship in OK-Junior, Belofsky spent most of 2025 creating sim racing content for Williams and sporadically testing GB4 machinery.

Lindblom, on the other hand, arrived in Bahrain with a very different level of preparation. The Red Bull junior was also a successful karter – finishing third at the World Championship in OKJ in 2023, a year before Belofsky – but he spent 2025 competing in the Ginetta Junior Championship. He finished the championship fourth overall with nine podiums and a significant gain in experience.

“I would say racecraft is learnt very well in Ginetta,” Lindblom wrote to Feeder Series. “You really need to look ahead at what’s coming, because so many unexpected things happen from 14-year-old drivers. […] F4 is completely different. In terms of driving technique it’s nothing like it. In F4, there is a different way of braking and racing too. Ginetta has zero aero, no response and it’s a contact sport. Let’s say Ginetta is like MMA and F4 ballet.”

F4 competition isn’t usually associated with gracefulness, but the driving standards in F4 Saudi Arabia were surprisingly high, especially considering that six races were held on the tricky Jeddah Corniche Circuit, the fastest street track in the world. No drivers in the top eight of the standings retired from a race across the season, and half the races – including four of the six at Jeddah – saw no retirements at all. 

Lindblom was not so surprised, however. “Many of us were international karting champions with great racecraft and respect for each other, which made great racing,” he wrote. 

So why Saudi Arabia? The series had only been run once before in early 2024, and only five of the 17 classified drivers from that season are still in single-seaters; champion Federico Al Rifai is not one of them. The sudden boom in interest came as a surprise to feeder series fans. In addition to Belofsky and Lindblom, it saw the single-seater debuts of reigning OK world champion Thibaut Ramaekers and Champions of the Future Academy Program OK-N Senior runner-up Chiara Bättig, Lindblom’s teammate in British F4.

“It was the end of the season and we just thought we needed to do some testing or something before going into doing whatever series next year,” Belofsky explained. “So we thought, ‘Okay, let’s give this one a chance.’ It was good pricing. It was a completely equally fixed set-up series, so I guess we can see and work on my skills and see how it would go.”

Along with running solely on circuits on the F1 calendar, the unique structure Belofsky mentioned surely helped attract drivers. Saudi F4 is centrally run by Hitech and Altawkilat Motorsport, so there were no distinct teams except for sponsorship reasons. That kept prices low as drivers weren’t competing for top seats.

Unlike in fellow centrally run series French F4, where each driver and engineer works to create custom set-ups for their cars, the Tatuus F4-T421 cars in Saudi F4 were said to have run with identical set-ups.

“Even the drivers won’t fully know if it’s identical, but it seemed to be pretty close between the top four or five,” fifth-place finisher Lewis Wherrell said. “We were all pretty close, all good drivers of course. I’d say it was all pretty equal.” 

Indeed, the gaps were small. Wherrell missed out on claiming pole position in race one of round three by only one hundredth to Belofsky. It was his debut in the series, and he had just two rounds of single-seater experience under his belt, one in Spanish F4 and one in GB4. He told Feeder Series that of the three series, he had the best experience in Saudi Arabia, where victories bookended his two-round campaign.

“[It was] a really good championship,” Wherrell said. “I couldn’t do the whole thing, but when I went there, the goal was still to win, and [I] managed to get two of them.”

For Lindblom, the decision to compete in Saudi F4 was mostly made for him. As a Red Bull Junior Team member, he follows a path mostly set for him by the heads of the Austrian marque’s junior programme.

“Red Bull and the organisers asked if I would like to do it. And I’m very pleased I got the opportunity from them both,” he wrote. “It’s one of the most well managed championships I’ve ever entered.”

Running equal set-ups will always be more advantageous to some drivers over others, but Lindblom told Feeder Series that the experience was still a beneficial one. 

“[The equal set-ups] hindered me for sure, big time,” he wrote. “All my career since I started karting, I always had a different set-up compared to my teammates due to the way I drive. But the good thing in Saudi was that I needed to adapt, and quickly, so it was a very good education and experience.

“I always want more and know there is always room for improvement. Looking back today, I’m proud of what I achieved. In the Bahrain and Jeddah races I had fantastic fun because we were fighting so hard but fair. It was great racing.”

Lindblom left the series with one round remaining to compete in Formula Trophy, as did fellow title challenger Adam Al Azhari, leaving Belosky to claim the title unopposed. With four wins and four additional podiums, the campaign was one for Belofsky to be proud of as he approached 2026. Less than a week after he was crowned champion, he was announced to be joining British F4 with Fortec Motorsports, who helped fellow Saudi F4 competitor Ary Bansal to his first FIA F4 win in 2025.

After round six of British F4 at Thruxton, Belofsky sat 13th in the standings with a sole podium to his name. “It’s been ups and downs,” he said. “It’s been a lot of learning, and there’s lots of [things that are] different, especially with the climate, the tracks.”

Belofsky has been absent from the series since Thruxton after suffering a concussion in race three, with his seat at Fortec now filled by Qarrar Firhand.

Lindblom’s season in Britain has more closely resembled his Middle Eastern successes. The Hitech driver claimed his first win at the Donington Park GP round and has six other podiums as well, his tally of seven below only the top two in the standings. Qualifying has been weaker, with only two top-five finishes from eight attempts – an issue compounded, he said, by the frequency of yellow and red flags in qualifying. Saving their best for the end of the session – as Lindblom said he had done ‘too many times’ this year – means drivers risk low starting positions if incidents affect the session.

Lindblom would also be higher in the standings were it not for his penalty points accumulation. British F4’s penalty points system, which sees drivers lose three championship points for every penalty point they gain after the first five, is not unfamiliar to Lindblom, who also experienced it in Ginettas. It stirred up some controversy earlier in the season when championship leader Dries Van Langendonck was given a one-round ban on the eve of the Donington Park GP round for accruing 12 penalty points in the previous 12 months. With three points often given per incident, drivers have little margin for error.

And as the series headed to Silverstone for the second time last week, Lindblom found himself falling foul of the rule too. With 12 penalty points to his name following an incident with Cameron Nelson at the previous round in Croft, Lindblom was forced to sit on the sidelines for the penultimate round. He was sixth in the standings before the weekend, 12.5 points behind George Proudford-Nalder; he will arrive at Brands Hatch in seventh, only three more points behind Proudford-Nalder but with Ethan Lennon between them. Twenty-one championship points have also been removed from his total, a punishment without which he would be fifth.

Needing to find that balance, the tipping point between commitment and calamity, has defined the careers of Lindblom and his peers in both the Saudi and the British F4 series.

“Every heat, every championship, every race is a world final, it creates hardness and a winning mentality, and you need to race as if it could be your last every time,” Lindblom wrote about his experiences in F4. “If you or the team are missing just a little bit at a day in BF4, you’re smoked. It’s that equal.”

Despite Van Langendonck’s earlier round ban and resulting non-score, he is nearly assured of the title. The only driver still with a chance of snatching it from him is Wherrell, who sits 72 points back from the championship leader with 75 still on the table. Over the season, the JHR Developments driver has accumulated three wins, eight additional podiums and, crucially, only three penalty points. Other than a scoreless round at Zandvoort where he ‘couldn’t really get everything together’ after qualifying 14th, he has finished in the top five in at least one race every weekend.

“[It’s been a] pretty good season overall,” Wherrell said. “[I] struggled a bit at the season opener at Donington and also a little bit at Zandvoort, but apart from that it’s been a really good season.”

With only one round left on the calendar – next week’s Brands Hatch season finale – many drivers are already looking ahead to 2027. A second season in F4 for Belofsky wouldn’t be a surprise, and he is yet to test any higher-level machinery publicly, although the concussion will have ruled him out of any recent testing.

Wherrell and Lindblom, meanwhile, seem likely to move up to FRegional Europe for next year. Both were shopping for seats over summer break, with Wherrell testing with ART Grand Prix and Rodin Motorsport and Lindblom with ART, Van Amersfoort Racing, CL Motorsport and R-ace GP. 

For Wherrell, those early tests were a chance to experience something new.

“It was really good, first time in a car that’s actually got downforce, first time in anything apart from F4. It was all about learning, seeing what we’re capable of and seeing where we can also learn as it might be an opportunity to do next year,” the Briton said.

“We’re just looking all around really, seeing what’s the best championship, because the sport’s all about money at the moment and it’s really difficult to get anywhere above FRECA. All my family put a lot of hard work into it. We don’t have the money that others have so it’s tricky, but we’ve all worked hard and the results are paying off.”

Wherrell got his first competitive taste of FR Europe at the season finale in Hockenheim, replacing Giovanni Maschio at RPM. There were no expectations of immediate success as Maschio had failed to score across the season, and Wherrell finished his first qualifying session 13th out of the 15 drivers and retired at the start of his first race. But things quickly changed on Sunday when he rose from 17th on the grid to eighth, claiming his first points at the FR level and scoring a rookie podium to boot.

With the season complete, the official post-season tests have begun. Despite his efforts in the race weekend, Wherrell was absent from the first test at Hockenheim three days later and also did not appear at the subsequent tests at Paul Ricard or the Red Bull Ring.

Lindblom, meanwhile, joined up again with Van Amersfoort Racing in their race-winning #11 car for all three tests. He finished second in the first session at Hockenheim, behind returning driver Yuki Sano, and has consistently been inside the top 15.

Lindblom’s participation next year is looking assured, but that doesn’t mean it was always expected. For the past two years, many of Red Bull’s juniors have been funnelled through Eurocup-3, including Ernesto Rivera, Enzo Tarnvanichkul, Jules Caranta and Christopher El Feghali. That seems set to change for 2027, though, with Lindblom joined at the FR Europe tests by fellow academy member Rocco Coronel and Red Bull–backed F1 Academy points leader Alisha Palmowski.

“It’s always from day one with Helmut [Marko] and Rocky [Guillaume Rocquelin, head of the RBJT] been very clear that they will always put me where the hardest competition is, whether I have the amount of preparation in testing miles or not, with a frontrunning team or not,” Lindblom wrote. “You are thrown into the shark tank. Let’s see how you cope with it and the situation you end up in.” 

As this year’s top F4 drivers are preparing for their moves upwards, a new generation is gathering in the desert. More and more Middle Eastern races are being cancelled or postponed indefinitely because of ongoing conflict in the Gulf region, with the latest being Formula Regional Middle East and F4 UAE, delayed until late 2027. But the Jeddah Corniche Circuit on the opposite side of the Arabian peninsula has been largely unaffected by the travel and shipping restrictions that have put events in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, including F1’s scheduled grands prix, in jeopardy.

Among the new faces in the series, which begins again this weekend, will be Lindblom’s Silverstone replacement, Archie Owen, who took a best finish of 14th last weekend. One of the biggest names on the list is fellow British driver Harrison Mackie, who recently claimed the runner-up trophy in Ginetta Junior, and the series continues to be the debut stage for senior karters such as Devin Walz, Amin Kara Osman and Eva Dorrestijn.

When British F4 arrives in Donington Park again next April, some of the stars of F4 Saudi Arabia will likely be there, armed with the knowledge they gained in Jeddah and Sakhir.

Perhaps a champion or two will be among them.

Editor’s note: Scott Kin Lindblom’s written responses have been lightly edited for clarity.

Additional reporting by Seb Tirado

Header photo credit: Connor Botha