Can anyone catch Camara after FREC’s summer break?

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After initially looking unstoppable, Rafael Camara’s Formula Regional Europe points lead has been pared back. Formula Scout spoke to title contenders and team managers before their summer break

Prema’s Rafael Camara sprinted out of the starting blocks to dominate the first three rounds of the Formula Regional European Championship season, taking four wins and two second places to establish a commanding 73-point lead.

Despite losing some of his advantage in the following three rounds before the summer break as other teams upped their pace, a fifth win at Paul Ricard leaves him still 50 points clear of fellow Ferrari junior Tuukka Taponen, with eight races to go.

Camara is justifiably content with the “very good job [we did] for the first half”, which he attributes to “all the hard work we did in the pre-season and from a positive season last year”.

“I think we worked well as a team and with the car to make sure that we were straight as competitive as possible when we started the season,” he told Formula Scout.

“After that, while the last three races were a bit trickier, we have always been fighting for pole positions and podiums. We just kept our heads down, kept working and now we can enjoy a bit of holidays. We have to come back with the same focus and start the second half with the same attitude [but] I think that’s the same for everyone.”

Prema team principal Rene Rosin has long been a fan of Camara’s, extolling the “amazing job” he is doing this year.

“Since I’ve known Rafa from karting he’s always been extremely fast, extremely competitive. He was the only one fighting with [Andrea Kimi] Antonelli in all the categories he has done,” he said.

“For the first time in his career, he’s repeating his season because it’s something that we discussed quite a lot with Ferrari. We need to make sure that he’s capable of winning, that we know that the experience will help him in the future.”

Camara has contributed almost two thirds of Prema’s 325 points, as team-mates James Wharton and Ugo Ugochukwu have struggled to match the Brazilian’s consistency.

The spread of Prema’s racing activities ensures Rosin is adept at multitasking, often sitting on the pitwall with “the phone with the FRegional and the big screen for Formula 3, Formula 2”.

He says he is “really happy generally about the team, how it’s going, because I have to say even James Wharton is doing a very good job considering the step from F4 to FREC”.

In Wharton’s case, as he recently explained in an in-depth interview with Formula Scout, pace has not been the biggest issue as driver errors and technical issues have taken some of the shine off a strong rookie season.

McLaren junior Ugochukwu has been unable to match his team-mates but as Rosin explains: “Ugo is a bit of an innocent case of the situation at the moment. We ran into some issues that that have compromised his performance and prevented him from showing his full competitive level. We are working very hard to try and solve these issues, that are not coming from our side or his mistakes.

“I’m really sorry for him, because he really deserves to do a very good job but I’m sure that to the end of the season, he will progress as much as possible because honestly he’s also doing a very good season.”

Rosin was reluctant to elaborate on these “issues”, but the team was forced to fit a third engine during practice in Paul Ricard, exceeding the two-engine limit for the entire season.

A provisional penalty of disqualification from the event was suspended, allowing Ugochukwu to compete in France, since “the technical delegate [was] not able to clearly and immediately determine the cause of the possible dysfunction […] of the first two engines”.

If subsequent analysis determines that either of the initial two engines did not fail, the disqualification will be applied retrospectively, and the team will be required to re-fit one of the original engines.

As in 2023, the closest challenge to Prema has come from R-ace GP, whose lead driver is Prema’s former F4 star Taponen. He had a run of four wins from five races, including a brace at the Hungaroring.

“We improved as a team quite a lot, already a bit in Zandvoort and then in Budapest. Mugello was [another] strong weekend for us,” Taponen told Formula Scout.

“Budapest was a perfect weekend. It was dry and wet conditions, and I managed to do two poles and two race wins. We kept a good momentum to Mugello doing a pole and race win on Saturday and finishing P4 on Sunday, which was a great weekend as well.”

Although acknowledging he has improved during the season, Taponen feels he “improved the most in [FRegional Middle East], always learning a bit more”. He won the title in that championship as a category rookie.

“Here, I have improved as well in every area. The co-operation [within R-ace] has been really good. Obviously, we have had some good and bad moments inside the team as well but most of the time we are working together and trying to do the best on and off track to fight always for the wins.”

“Everything is open,” he added in reference to the title fight. “Rafa got a big advantage at the beginning of the year, but I have closed the gap quite a lot, but we definitely need to find something to fight for the wins at the end of the season.”

That need comes in part due to R-ace “struggling on high-speed tracks” since “the start of the season”.

“Spa-Francorchamps it was difficult and again in Paul Ricard where the straights are a bit longer, we are missing a bit. The car is really good in the corners, and aero is the same for everybody more or less, but always when we go to the corners we are super quick but then we are missing a bit after. We need to find some more speed for after the holiday.”

Unlike most of his rivals, Taponen did not head straight for the beach, instead making his F3 debut with ART Grand Prix at Spa a week after Paul Ricard. He qualified 13th, one place shy of reversed-grid pole, and two tricky races left him frustrated.

For R-ace’s team principal, Thibaut de Merindol, the season so far has been one of “ups and downs”.

“[We had a] difficult start at Hockenheim. Spa was very difficult for different reasons. Car-wise we were not really good for the first events. I think we managed to assess and correct the situation from Hungaroring, [which, together with] Mugello have been, I think, very strong. Race after race, season after season, we are still scratching our heads to find the little tenth somewhere but okay, it’s never easy, you know?”

Taponen’s team-mates Zachary David and Red Bull junior Enzo Deligny have shown flashes of pace, with David’s Spa podium a highlight.

“We would like to do better with both of them,” de Merindol admits. “It’s also not a concern but for sure a source of motivation for us. We feel we can do better.”

R-ace has been kept on its toes by the resurgent Van Amersfoort Racing, which with its three rookies motivating and pushing each other has become a consistent frontrunner. The Dutch team entered the break just four points behind its French rival.

“This is good. I mean, obviously, it’s more competition [but] I think it’s good for the championship,” de Merindol says of being rivalled by VAR.

“It’s also good for us because then we need to push ourselves. For sure, VAR did a good step forward. I think now they are really in the mix with Prema and us on every track.”

VAR’s team manager Danielle Geel agrees that a significant step forward has been made.

“We worked hard this winter to make that step, [both] with the drivers and also we had a few new people in the team. We had a lot of work to do, and I think that hard work pays off now,” she told Formula Scout. “We are not there where we want to be yet, but we are going towards the good direction.”

“We already showed good pace in Hockenheim. Especially with three rookies, it is really nice to be in the top 10. In Spa, we had a more difficult race, but in Mugello we really had a strong pace and we were dominant and then in race one [to finish] P2, P3 and P4 with three rookies, that’s a really good performance.

“We are really happy as a team and with the drivers, and it gives us even more motivation to make an extra step in the second half of the season and be as successful as we were for the first half of the season, because we are still not P1 and until you’re on that spot, you always need to work hard. Even if you are P1, you also need to work hard to be in front of your competitors.”

In three of FREC’s past seasons, VAR has ended its campaign with two victories. While it is yet to win in 2024, Geel values the overall consistency “because with this you can collect as many points, and also win a championship”.

Brando Badoer has been one of the standout performers of the season so far, being runner-up five races in a row then collecting a sixth podium straight after. His streak came to an end in an incident-filled opening to Paul Ricard race two.

Until that point, Badoer had scored points in every round. Now only Camara has. A first win, not only in FREC but in three years of racing cars, incredibly remains elusive for the 17-year-old Italian.

Neither driver nor team sense any frustration at so far having missed the podium’s top step, but Geel believes “that he’s getting more and more hungry to get that win”.

“I’m pretty sure that that the win will come this year, but we keep working until we are there,” she said.

“I’m not really frustrated, because it’s my first season,” added Badoer. “I think I’m doing a good job, and I try to work as hard as I can to get the win but let’s see what happens. If we are solid at the front then maybe sooner or later it will come.”

The title is a possibility, he argues, as he sits 77 points behind Camara with 200 left still to score: “There are still eight races left, so anything can happen. We will work race-by-race and try to do it.”

His team-mate Ivan Domingues meanwhile has been one of the season’s surprises, with a string of strong performances that put him atop FREC’s rookie standings. Pedro Clerot has lacked consistency, but enjoyed superb weekends at Spa and Mugello.

Geel is “really happy with how the guys are working with each other, making each other better and also helping each other; where the other ones have weaker points, the other ones have stronger points”.

From outside, the drivers give the impression of forming a cohesive and co-operative team as well as a quick one. Geel also sees that.

“Ivan and Brando knew each other already when they were racing in F4 with us. Pedro was new to the team, but also he is a really good person to have in the team. They all have different characters but that works really fine together. It’s really nice to see.”

ART GP has bounced back from a winless 2023 to take victories with Evan Giltaire and Alessandro Giusti.

Williams junior Giusti came into his sophomore season as one of the title favourites but struggled to get everything together until he stormed to victory in the rain at Paul Ricard to enter the summer break on a high.

The modest Giltaire has been an equal for his more experienced team-mate and predecessor as French F4 champion, winning first time out at Hockenheim, and is highly rated in the paddock.

“Hockenheim was a different weekend to the others. We won a race, but it wasn’t really the performance that we have had the whole season. I have been really working on myself and in this hard category to understand the tyres, the weight of the car, everything,” Giltaire reflects.

“It’s not looking really good at the moment, but I continue to progress, so I am happy about the work we do with the team.

“I did a lot of mistakes in my quali laps in the two or three last meetings, but when I’m fully 100% well in the car and made no mistakes I’m close to Sandro [Giusti] who has a lot of experience compared to me. I have progressed a lot compared to him so I’m happy with my progress.

“Race pace is a bit more tricky than qualifying. I have a lot of problems with degradation but in the battles like [race one at Paul Ricard], where I started 12th and finished eighth, it was a good first half of the race but in the end the degradation caught me [out] and it was a bit tricky at the end but I’m happy with my races.

“I will be stronger after the summer break surely,” he concludes with a smile.

For Italo-Irish team Race Performance Motorsport the season so far has been a frustrating one, with team principal Keith Donegan admitting that it has been at a loss to explain team leader Noah Stromsted’s lack of pace.

The Dane has nevertheless scored all 61 of R-P-M’s points, including a second and a fourth at Spa, then another podium at Paul Ricard. Rookie Edgar Pierre and sophomore Giovanni Maschio have struggled for pace in the team’s other cars.

Trident came into 2024 with high hopes of a title challenge with third-year driver Roman Bilinski. After taking a second at Spa, the British-Pole broke two vertebrae in a road accident, putting him out of action for the four rounds since.

Bilinski had hoped to make a comeback at Mugello but was ruled out by the circuit’s doctors. But he has time to recover before the next round at Imola in September.

“It’s a shame that he had to stop in that moment. He had his accident, and it was in a perfect moment of his season because he did the pole in Spa. He was quite competitive, and he was really excited to go to Zandvoort, which is a quite complicated track, and then Budapest where historically, he was always fast,” dwelled Trident’s team manager Luca Zerbini.

Bilinski had been expected not only to lead the team but help develop his rookie team-mates “because to keep a driver on for his third year, that already knows the team very well, it was a very good help for the other two drivers [Alpine junior Nicola Lacorte and Ruiqi Liu] because even though they are very good, they are rookies.”

After running just two cars at Zandvoort, Michael Belov was drafted in for yet another FRegional return in Hungary.

As he explained to Formula Scout, his career has been frustrated by budget and geopolitical factors, and if his Paul Ricard appearance is his last, he could at least make his mark after topping his qualifying group on both days. He held on to his starting spot to be race one runner-up, before being eliminated by Badoer in race two.

“Michael is a really, really good driver and he’s helping the team now, but also for him was not very, very easy to jump in a car. He had not been driving for months, but he is doing a very good job, so hopefully from now we will get the pace back,” Zerbini told Formula Scout.

Both rookies have made progress, each scoring three points. Expectations were perhaps higher for Lacorte, given his race-winning F4 form, but Zerbini has been particularly impressed by Liu’s improvement.

“[It] was quite a surprise because Nicola was more competitive last year in F4, so it was not a big surprise if he’s able to get the result, but for Ruiqi that was struggling more last year, to see him that constantly now in the top half of the classification [is positive]. They’re improving and growing and at the end of the day, this is our aim to help them to grow. So, we are happy.”

Sainteloc Racing opted for an all-rookie line-up, but an exciting one, headed by Spanish F4 champion Theophile Nael. However French F4 runner-up Enzo Peugeot has often looked the most impressive, scoring in every race at Spa and Zandvoort.

The team’s managing director Morgan Caron reflected on 2024 while chatting to Formula Scout in the Paul Ricard paddock.

“It’s a challenging championship, very competitive once again and on our side basically we have shown good performances. We have three rookies, [which] was a bet on our side honestly, [who] are doing well. A special highlight [has been] Peugeot, honestly, he is the one performing the best from the team. Hopefully we can confirm the pace by making a proper pole position, a podium and a victory.”

“They are all progressing, for sure. There are many areas where they still need to improve but it’s a feeder series. They are there to learn but we are convinced the three rookies can finish the season on the rise.”

Two other teams have scored: MP Motorsport and G4 Racing. Nikita Bedrin has scored all but one of MP’s points but was forced to miss the Hungaroring round due to a calendar clash with his FIA F3 programme for AIX Racing.

After his strong results in a season-end cameo in 2023, Bedrin had been expected to challenge for the title but, in truth, has yet to look like a potential race-winner, admitting to Formula Scout that “switching every time from F3 to FREC is kind of difficult”.

Nikhil Bohra has so far not come close to matching his 2023 results with Trident, and Valerio Rinicella is yet to score.

G4 also runs three rookies, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, is yet to match the peaks of its impressive 2023 with Giusti and Belov. The team manager Adrian Munoz acknowledges the steep learning curve for rookies, particularly on some of the circuits in the season’s first half like Hockenheim and the Hungaroring where opportunities to learn the track are more limited.

“So far, we are happy with our drivers. They have been learning, they are making good steps up. But FREC is every single year quite competitive,” he says. Kanato Le’s fourth place in France gives G4 encouragement for after the summer break.

“Race-by-race we are progressing and understanding where we are, and we keep evaluating where we are at every event and trying to improve for the next one.”

Munoz adds: “[The key with rookies] is trying to manage the expectations because many times when they do well in F4 and they come to FREC in the beginning they think like, ‘okay, this is just a little bit bigger car’. But in the end it’s quite big step – way more powerful engine, bigger tyres and the competition is fierce because there are drivers that are coming from the previous year, other drivers who did F3, [FRegional in the] Emirates or the New Zealand championship.

“Last year with us Alessandro Giusti was improving more from the middle of the season to the end, when he really got more used to the procedures, to the car, to the tyres, to the circuits, coming from a championship like F4 France.

“The three rookie drivers in VAR are coming up very quickly and we aim that in the second part of the year, our rookie drivers will make continuous steps to try to get better results. For me, we were expecting to be on a learning curve, so that hopefully [when] we speak again in Monza, we can see already the progress.”

KIC Motorsport has been co-operating with Evans GP this year, although has so far rotated three different drivers alongside regulars Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi and Hoang Dat ‘Alex’ Sawer.

FREC’s newest team, Iron Dames, came from sportscars and has attracted plenty of publicity for its all-female line-up of F1 Academy champion Marta Garcia and Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 junior Doriane Pin who took the squad’s best result of 14th at Paul Ricard after missing five races through a combination of fractured ribs and a clash with her F1 Academy campaign.

While rivals have muttered misgivings about a sister team to Prema being given an entry, the team itself has done the maximum to ensure that the two teams are run at arm’s length from each other. And the added media attention has undoubtedly been a massive benefit to FREC’s public profile.

While some of the extreme expectations expressed on social media have been fantastic, the two drivers seem to have kept their feet on the ground, and have been making strong progress, with both looking more comfortable in qualifying at Paul Ricard. And with Iron Dames bringing the field up to 32 cars, the loss of Monolite Racing and Arden in 2024 hasn’t been felt.

“There are not anymore some teams [without a] budget or enough tools,” notes Munoz. “Nowadays, everyone is going to the simulator and there is a lot of simulation tools for the teams. The level is quite good and any single mistake in quali condemns you to be in the back and then you need to really make your way back to the front so I would say that that the championship is in a pretty good situation.”