Olivieri unanimously voted FREC driver of the year by team managers

Photo: ACI Sport

Emanuele Olivieri has been voted Formula Regional Europe’s driver of the season by the paddock’s team principals and managers in the poll conducted annually by Formula Scout.

The R-ace GP driver follows in the illustrious footsteps of Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Rafael Camara and Freddie Slater. Not only is he the first non-Prema driver to scoop the awards but he is the first to do so with a maximum score, as each of the three previous winners fell one point short of a perfect tally.

Each of the teams in the championship was asked to submit their ranking of the top 10 drivers for the 2026 season. To maintain objectivity, team managers were not allowed to vote for their own teams’ drivers. As in previous years, only those drivers competing in at least half the rounds were eligible, excluding, for example, Oleksandr Bondarev, who would otherwise have undoubtedly featured on the list.

Points in the poll were awarded on a 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis. With 10 teams participating, each driver therefore had a potential maximum score on 90 points.

The top three positions mirrored the overall standings, with MP Motorsport’s Sebastian Wheldon outscoring Prema’s Kean Nakamura-Berta for second behind Olivieri. Wheldon was ranked second six times and Nakamura-Berta twice.

The only other driver to be ranked second by any team was Reno Francot, who was ranked fourth overall, one place higher than his final championship position reflecting his excellent performance in the second-year CL Motorsport team, with Rashid Al Dhaheri dropping to fifth. Al Dhaheri was the only driver in the top 10 to have also  featured in last season’s ranking.

MP Motorsport’s Alexander Abkhazava was placed sixth after developing strongly during the year ahead of RPM’s Jan Przyrowski, a race winner at the final round at Hockenheim, and Rodin Motorsport’s Alex Ninovic.

Only 12th in the points standings, Przyrowski’s performances clearly impressed observers down the pit lane as he took the fight to the larger teams. However, his five-place gain was nothing compared to the nine-place jump by Marcus Saeter, who has consistently figured in the leading group with another of the underdog teams, G4 Racing.

The top 10 was rounded out by R-ace GP’s third driver in the list, Yuki Sano, who beat Newman Chi to the final spot by five points. Sano finished level on points with Saeter, but lost out to the Norwegian who was included by one more team in their top 10.

Both Sano and Chi were only included in the top 10 four times, but when they were ranked it was often quite high up. ART Grand Prix’s Alexandre Munoz on the other hand was ranked in the top 10 by seven of the nine eligible teams but each time in ninth or tenth.

Aside from the ineligible Bondarev, an honourable mention should go to Giovanni Maschio who bowed out of the series after 77 consecutive races for RPM before the Hockenheim finale and scored one point in this ranking.

A total of 19 drivers received at least one nomination, although surprisingly, only five drivers – Olivieri, Wheldon, Nakamura-Berta, Francot and Abkhazava – were included in every team’s top 10 ranking.

In addition to Chi, Munoz and Mascho, those outside the combined top 10 were Trident’s Maksimilian Popov, Prema’s Salim Hanna and Tomass Stolcermanis, Rodin’s Gabriel Gomez, CL Motorsport’s Jules Roussel and G4 Racing’s Saqer Almaosherji.

Formula Scout would like to thank the following team principals and managers for their time in submitting ratings for the poll:

Maarten De Busser (MP Motorsport), Keith Donegan (RPM), Danielle Geel (Van Amersfoort Racing), Alvaro Martinez (Prema), Ben Lathrope (Rodin Motorsport), David Li (CL Motorsport), Thibaut de Merindol (R-ace GP), Adrian Munoz (G4 Racing), Mathieu Zangarelli (ART Grand Prix) and Luca Zerbini (Trident).

2026 FREC teams’ driver poll results