Photo: Dutch Photo Agency
Russian drivers Michael Belov and Maximilian Popov will join the Eurocup-3 grid this weekend for the season finale at Barcelona.
It will be Belov’s third outing in Eurocup-3, having raced for Drivex School in the Jerez round last year and picked up a fifth place and a seventh, then joining Allay Racing’s line-up earlier this year at Assen and finishing second on his comeback race.
The 23-year-old will reunite with Drivex this weekend, and it has not been confirmed if he is replacing someone in the team’s line-up. Drivex has regularly fielded five cars, but only one of its drivers has been full-time and last time out at Jerez its line-up shrank to three cars.
Belov, who did three FIA Formula 3 Championship rounds in 2020, has spent six years racing in single-seaters’ fourth tier and his most successful was in 2021 when he came eighth in the Formula Regional European Championship with two wins. This year he was 15th in the FREC standings, and as he missed the opening round it means none of his five seasons there have been full-time.
Popov will be making his Eurocup-3 debut with the Global Racing Service team.
The 17-year-old single-seater sophomore is entering the finale as preparation for joining Trident in FREC next year.
In 2024 he drove for PHM Racing in four Formula 4 championships, and took a win F4 Central European Zone but struggled for form in the more competitive E4, Italian F4 and F4 United Arab Emirates.
He switched to Van Amersfoort Racing for 2025, starting off in the Formula Winter Series where he came sixth with two podiums.
A big improvement was made in Italian F4, and Popov was the second-highest non-Prema driver in the championship as he made the podium five times and came sixth in the standings. Over in E4, he had one podium and was eighth in the points.