Photo: FEED Racing France
Malo Bolliet has won a French Formula 4 seat for 2025 after coming out victorious in the final of this year’s FEED Racing France shootout.
Launched in 2019, FEED Racing France is a scheme and racing school founded and fronted by 1997 Formula 1 world champion Jacques Villeneuve and former CART driver Patrick Lemarie that provides annual scholarships for drivers to race in FFSA Academy’s centrally-run French F4 championship.
The 2024 edition of the shootout began in July with a longlist of 51 drivers from 17 countries, and three five-day courses at Magny-Cours to help them (in groups of 17) learn about and adapt to an F4 car. Each one concluded with a qualifying day which determined which eight drivers would progress to the quarter-finals stage.
Ethan Jeff-Hall was added to FEED Racing’s roster of drivers at the start of August after impressing in the Rotax Max Challenge International Trophy for Rotax Junior karts.
In addition to the 24 qualifiers, including Jeff-Hall, there were a further eight drivers then handed quarter-final spots later in August having impressed Villeneuve and Lemarie.
That group of 32 drivers in total was then split in two for more on-track action one day after the other, with only six drivers from each group making it to the semi-finals. That part of the knockout stages took place the day after the quarter-finals concluded, and whittled the driver count down further to six.
Making it to the final alongside Frenchman and eventual victor Bolliet were his 17-year-old compatriots Mathys Capuccio, Hugo Herrouin and Elio Saintpaul, 15-year-old Dutch Tommie van der Struijs and Belgian 16-year-old Aaron Ferrazzano.
The sixtet got a month to rest before the final, which like all other stages was held at Magny-Cours using Mygale’s first-generation F4 cars, on September 25-27. Two free practice sessions filled the opening day, with another two the day after before drivers embarked on the pre-final. A warm-up on Friday morning preceded the decisive final itself.
FP2 was a washout, but drivers did get dry running between the rain showers across the three days. Villeneuve commented on Instagram that the finalists were “a few tenths apart” after the first two days of action.
Capuccio and Ferrazzano were eliminated at first, setting up two head-to-head duels. Bolliet and Saintpaul headed out first, then Herrouin and van der Struijs went up against each other.
The victories went to Bolliet and Herrouin, meaning they were pitted against each other in another head-to-head encounter that took place just as the sun set. The pair were equipped with wet weather tyres, and had their rain lights on too due to the decreasing visibility. Bolliet came out on top to earn himself a future in single-seater racing.
The 19-year-old was 18th in the CIK-FIA World championship for OK karts in 2022, and was IAME’s French series champion and Warriors Final runner-up last year in addition to coming fifth in its Winter Cup and 16th in its Euro Series for X30 Senior karts.