Photo: Dutch Photo Agency
Russian driver Michael Belov will return to action by joining Drivex School’s Eurocup-3 line-up at Jerez this weekend.
The 22-year-old has raced infrequently since his country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, doing half-seasons in Formula Regional’s Asian and European championships that year, 16 out of 20 races in the 2023 FREC season and a six-race spell there this year which included a podium finish at Paul Ricard.
Belov had made it up to FIA Formula 3 in 2020, coming 23rd in the championship with one point from his six races there.
Recently he has also been supporting his countrymen’s racing efforts, including Vladislav Ryabov’s return to the cockpit in Euroformula last weekend at Barcelona. The 18-year-old came 27th in Spanish Formula 4 in 2022, did one round in the F3-level Euroformula championship in 2023 then was absent from racing again until he joined Motopark a week ago.
Ryabov qualified fifth out of seven cars, 0.718 seconds off the pace, then finished sixth and fifth in the first two races. In both he was more than 10s behind the winner. However from second on the reversed grid in race three he was able to pull off an unexpected and emotional victory.
“They say you can’t win the race in one corner, but I did it actually,” Ryabov joked about the lap one overtake that put him into the lead.
“I had one-and-a-half years break since [last] racing, it means so much to me to come back after sleepless nights, after hours in the gymn. It means so much to me. It was such a stressful weekend. It didn’t go as planned.
“Because in the beginning I didn’t have the pace, because I just was so scared to drive the car, it’s so fast for me. After the break, it was very difficult to get used to the car. But we managed to create a good progress through the weekend, and eventually win the race. It means so much to me, I’m so relieved actually.”
He added: “One-and-a-half year break. Come back, win. Let’s see what’s next.”
The 27-strong entry list for Eurocup-3 this weekend does not include Ryabov, but does feature Georgi Zhuravskiy switching from Drivex to MP Motorsport and Euroformula race-winner Gerrard Xie joining Palou Motorsport.