Photo: Gedlich Racing/Daniel Burgin
The Formula 4-spec Formula Winter Series has announced that in 2025 it will split into two racing competitions with the creation of a new F4 Winter Championship.
FWinter Series was launched last year by trackday promoter Gedlich Racing, which had run a similar GT Winter Series in Iberia through the winter of 2021/22, and it was open to teams with Tatuus T-421 cars fitted with Abarth engines.
The inaugural season had rounds at four Spanish tracks through February and March of 2023, and US Racing’s Kacper Sztuka won the title. He then went on to become Italian F4 champion that year.
For 2024, Gedlich started working with the organiser of Spain’s national F4 championship as it ran another four-round schedule in the country and MP Motorsport’s Griffin Peebles took the title. The alliance expands now by having two winter series in 2025.
“From now on, we are splitting the series into a series for the Spanish customer teams and a series for international participants,” explained Gedlich’s CEO Markus Gedlich.
“The demand for the FWinter Series is so great that it would only make sense to take this next step. In this way, we can keep the driver fields at a good size and at the same time provide the respective customer teams with optimal conditions that perfectly suit their needs regarding racing and testing.”
The F4 Winter Championship will use Hankook tyres, as the summer series does, while FWinter Series will switch from the Korean manufacturer to Pirelli rubber. Explaining the reason for the change, series co-ordinator Stefan Lehner said:
“This is the most logical step to go. With the Pirelli tyres, we are addressing the teams in Central Europe, Italy and the UK, since they all drive their summer championships on Pirelli tyres and thus find a perfect platform with us to drive a full racing season in a concentrated period of time, to get optimally trained and to drive for a full-fledged championship. The FWS should also be particularly attractive for [F1 Academy].”
The 2025 FWinter Series season begins at Portuguese track Algarve on January 30-February 2, with the remaining rounds in Spain at Valencia’s Ricardo Tormo circuit (February 13-16), Motorland Aragon (February 27-March 2) and Barcelona (March 6-9).