Photo: ACI Sport
Evan Giltaire has his sights set on a move to Japan after his absence from the FIA Formula 3 post-season tests.
Though he has not given up hope of grabbing one of the few remaining F3 seats for 2026, he admits that the chances at this stage “are 0.1%”. Without a financial boost or support from a Formula 1 team, he acknowledges that the road appears closed.
The Frenchman sees no gains from a third year in Formula Regional, with a step up to Super Formula Lights in Japan his current preferred destination and the USA as a possible alternative.
Giltaire entered the 2025 FRegional European Championship on a high, having won the FRegional Middle East title. While he showed flashes of speed in FREC, fifth in the standings with a solitary victory failed to match expectations with his talent.
“It has been a tough season,” he told Formula Scout. “[Having won FRME] it was very frustrating. I wanted more for sure. In the first part of the season, except for some mistakes that we did, we still had the pace. But then in the middle of the season, we struggled a bit.”
As in 2024, his FREC season began with a win in round one. Despite its trials, Giltaire called that event at Misano “my best weekend” of 2025.
“It was a difficult weekend at first for us. Then we managed to secure P2 and the [track] record in qualifying, winning the race, [but] we were not the fastest. We just maximised 110% of what we could do. The others made some mistakes, and we managed to secure a good weekend by this.”
After that was Spa-Francorchamps, where he has a practice off, and a tricky Zandvoort round in which he stalled on the grid.
“I lost confidence while crashing in Spa and Zandvoort,” he admitted, although added that he and his ART Grand Prix team also took a wrong turn on set-up.
“I was frustrated for half of the season. The package overall was not that good for [Paul Ricard], Imola [and the Hungaroring].”
However, the latter end of the season featured a marked upturn in speed and fortune, with two fourth places then three successive podiums to end the year.
“I believed in my mind that I could improve myself and improve the car along with my engineer, so we worked a lot to find some solutions and it started to pay. We got faster and faster, with confidence that the car is getting better, and I also got a bit more the mentality that I had in the Middle East.”
ART GP’s points from the final round moved it back ahead of Trident to take fourth in the teams’ standings.
Despite scoring almost 60% of his team’s FREC points, it was team-mates Kanato Le and Taito Kato who did FIA F3’s three post-season tests with ART GP.
While frustrated “that we could have done better”, Giltaire is “still happy about what I’ve maximised during the season.”