Photo: ACI Sport
Williams Formula 1 junior Sasha Bondarev’s switch to single-seaters has taken a challenge he faced in karting into a new setting.
The 15-year-old Ukrainian has grown a lot in 2024, and was already 182cm tall when he debuted in Formula 4.
He began 2024 by winning the WSK Champions Cup and first WSK Super Master Series round for OK karts, and was runner-up in Champions of the Future’s opener at a wet Valencia in March but it was starting to get “very difficult” as he struggled for pace – his increasing height naturally also increasing his weight.
“The main problem was that I got way too tall already; I put a lot more force on the tyre, which just gives you a massive disadvantage at the end of the race,” he explained to Formula Scout.
Results thereon were harder to come by, but he“didn’t have any pressure” come the CIK-FIA World Karting Championship in September.
“It was more just to try end my karting career on a high, and I feel like we made a step which I was happy about for sure.”
Bondarev ran in eighth before crashing out in treacherously wet conditions: “I made a mistake and spun, so that wasn’t what we wanted to have from the Worlds. But it is what it is, and now we’re here in cars and it’s a completely different story already.”
Bondarev made his Italian F4 debut with Prema at Barcelona two weeks later, having spent summer testing, and finished 18th from 21st on the grid in race three. He then raced at Monza, qualifying 12th and finishing 11th in race one.
“This weekend has been a massive improvement,” he said in the paddock there. “After a tricky qualifying in Barcelona it was difficult to do well in the races, but now we’re starting more towards the front, so we knew it was going to be better.”
Having “made a big step in qualifying performance”, Bondarev called 11th “a good result, maybe missed a little bit of racecraft, but it was my first F4 race in the wet, so it’s normal”.
He got up to eighth in race two, which he started on slick tyres, but retired: “It felt like we did the right call and at the start it was actually okay, but then it started to rain midway through the race and just got so difficult. A car spun in front of me and then another one crashed into him and I couldn’t avoid them. It was quite treacherous.”
“The first couple of laps were really good, plus I was the first car on slicks, so in case it wouldn’t start to rain, we probably would have moved up as well.”
Bondarev “has good notes taken” for 2025, and his car racing preparations not only included testing, but joining Prema’s F1 junior-focused karting squad.
“In Barcelona, it was very difficult to [manage tyres], considering the high temperatures and having to do three races on two sets of tyres,” he ruminated, and identified challenges being in the pack. “The car is so much bigger, and they’re all around you, so especially on the starts it makes it very tricky.”
But Williams “told me not to worry about any results for these two races, just to focus on learning as much as I can”.