Photo: SRO
Bruno del Pino and William Karlsson are the latest two drivers to be announced as joining the Formula Regional European Championship grid at the Red Bull Ring this weekend.
Yesterday there was the news that 2021 championship runner-up Hadrien David would be returning with Monolite Racing and Jesse Carrasquedo would be stepping up from Formula 4 with Van Amersfoort Racing to replace Joshua Dufek, while today it was confirmed that MP Motorsport and KIC Motorsport would be returning to running three-car line-ups.
Del Pino will be driving for MP, which since the death of its driver Dilano van’t Hoff at Spa-Francorchamps in July has been only entering two cars.
Spanish teenager del Pino is already well known to the team, as he races for them in the FRegional-based Eurocup-3 series and is currently eighth in the standings with a best finish of fourth. Last year he took the bronze medal for his country in the Motorsport Games Formula 4 Cup, and also came 16th in the Spanish F4 championship as a car racing rookie.
His Eurocup-3 rival Karlsson will be making his FREC debut with KIC, who has also retained Ukrainian driver Ivan Klymenko after he made his first appearance in the series last time out at Paul Ricard.
Karlsson sits 16th in the Eurocup-3 standings, and missed the most recent round despite being on a two-year full-time deal with the Drivex School team. Recently he appeared in Porsche Sprint Challenge Scandinavia.
The Swede debuted in single-seaters in 2020 in the Formula Renault 1.6-spec FNordic series, and won once en route to fifth in the points for Nika Racing, the team owned by his Formula 3 title-winning father Nicklas Karlsson.
He stayed in FNordic for 2021 and took seven wins and the title. Last year he planned to move to the new ACCR F4 championship with Renauer Motorsport, but delays to that series getting underway meant he instead raced for BVM Racing in Italian F4 where he came 21st in the standings with one point.