
Photo: Red Bull Content Pool
Fionn McLaughlin was quickest on the opening day of Formula Winter Series pre-event testing at Algarve, as the field for the season ahead fully formed.
Before testing began, Campos Racing revealed its all-female line-up of Chloe Chambers, Rafaela Ferreira and Alisha Palmowski. The trio are all using the series as a warm-up for the female-only F1 Academy, where they will also be racing for Campos.
Palmowski and Ferreira will compete this weekend, then Chambers will replace Ferreira for FWinter Series round two at Valencia’s Ricardo Tormo circuit. In round three at Motorland Aragon, Chambers will be partnered by Ferreira.
Chambers came 16th in the all-female W Series for Formula Regional cars back in 2022, was a FRegional Oceania race-winner in 2023 and was sixth in F1 Academy with Campos last year. Ferreira took three wins en route to fourth in the 2024 Brazilian F4 standings, and Palmowski was a three-time winner and championship runner-up in GB4 last year.
AKM Motorsport will enter Georgi Zhuravskiy and Joanne Ciconte into FWinter Series. Zhuravskiy was 22nd in the FRegional-based Eurocup-3 series in 2024, and Ciconte made appearances in Australian and Spanish F4.
Andrea Dupe, Nordic 4 race-winner Sebastian Bach and the French F4-experienced Mathilda Paatz will race for AS Motorsport, and Dupe has also been signed for Italian F4.
The 16-year-old Dupe was 19th in the South Garda Winter Cup, 25th in the CIK-FIA World championship and 26th in the Champions of the Future series when racing on OK karts.
Hitech GP’s McLaughlin topped all three test sessions on Thursday, setting a 1m47.938s in the opening 55-minute session to lead team-mate Leo Robinson by 0.071 seconds and US Racing’s Maxim Rehm by 0.956s. Only seven laptimes in total were deleted due to track limits abuse, but that jumped up to over 70 in session two.
The pace was lowered to 1m45.847s, with other team-mate Thomas Bearman and Van Amersfoort Racing’s Maximilian Popov trailing McLaughlin by 0.3s. US’s Gabriel Gomez, Robinson and US’s Edu Robinson were the only other drivers with a second of the pace.
Everyone set their personal best laps in session three, and a 1m45.513s from McLaughlin put him just 0.054s ahead of Bearman as little over a second covered the top 13. Paatz joined the action too after missing the first two sessions, as over 70 laptimes were deleted again.
Several of Hitech’ squads across junior single-seaters this year, including in FWinter Series, will be entered as ‘Hitech Toyota Gazoo Racing’ to reflect a new alliance with Toyota focused on driver development.
Day one results
Pos | Driver | Team | Time | Gap | Laps |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Fionn McLaughlin | Hitech GP | 1m45.513s | 45 | |
2 | Thomas Bearman | Hitech GP | 1m45.567s | +0.054s | 44 |
3 | Gabriel Gomez | US Racing | 1m45.800s | +0.287s | 36 |
4 | Leo Robinson | Hitech GP | 1m45.813s | +0.300s | 43 |
5 | Kabir Aburag | US Racing | 1m45.964s | +0.451s | 45 |
6 | Maximilian Popov | Van Amersfoort Racing | 1m46.224s | +0.711s | 50 |
7 | Sebastian Bach | AS Motorsport | 1m46.226s | +0.713s | 47 |
8 | Edu Robinson | US Racing | 1m46.313s | +0.800s | 39 |
9 | Enea Frey | Jenzer Motorsport | 1m46.361s | +0.848s | 46 |
10 | Luka Sammalisto | US Racing | 1m46.377s | +0.864s | 47 |
11 | Maxim Rehm | US Racing | 1m46.394s | +0.881s | 44 |
12 | Bart Harrison | Jenzer Motorsport | 1m46.516s | +1.003s | 46 |
13 | Nina Gademan | Hitech GP | 1m46.517s | +1.004s | 39 |
14 | Andrea Dupe | AS Motorsport | 1m46.613s | +1.100s | 46 |
15 | Alisha Palmowski | Campos Racing | 1m46.866s | +1.353s | 47 |
16 | Artem Severeiukhin | Jenzer Motorsport | 1m46.876s | +1.363s | 40 |
17 | Alexander Ruta | Cram Motorsport | 1m46.958s | +1.445s | 52 |
18 | Andrija Kostic | US Racing | 1m47.007s | +1.494s | 48 |
19 | Dante Vinci | Van Amersfoort Racing | 1m47.097s | +1.584s | 43 |
20 | Joanne Ciconte | AKM Motorsport | 1m47.222s | +1.709s | 38 |
21 | Payton Westcott | Van Amersfoort Racing | 1m47.282s | +1.769s | 54 |
22 | Rafaela Ferreira | Campos Racing | 1m47.497s | +1.983s | 48 |
23 | Simon Schranz | Renauer Motorsport | 1m47.669s | +2.156s | 56 |
24 | Georgi Zhuravskiy | AKM Motorsport | 1m47.788s | +2.275s | 38 |
25 | Alba Hurup Larsen | Jenzer Motorsport | 1m47.901s | +2.388s | 48 |
26 | Teo Borenstein | Maffi Racing | 1m47.958s | +2.445s | 48 |
27 | Kirill Kutskov | Maffi Racing | 1m48.052s | +2.539s | 36 |
28 | Mathilda Paatz | AS Motorsport | 1m48.666s | +3.153s | 19 |
29 | Kornelia Olkucka | Maffi Racing | 1m49.454s | +3.941s | 48 |
30 | Aiva Anagnostiadis | Cram Motorsport | 1m49.823s | +4.310s | 50 |