Photo: F4 UAE
The long-standing Formula 4 United Arab Emirates championship will evolve into F4 Middle East next year, and a new national series has already sprung up to exist alongside it.
The category arrived in the UAE eight years ago with a trophy event at Yas Marina Circuit, and a championship launched a month later which ran from November 2016 to March 2017.
A 2017-18 season followed, with races at the Formula 1-hosting Yas Marina and Dubai Autodrome, then a single-year schedule was adopted from 2019 onwards with races taking place usually in January and February.
That year the trophy event returned, supporting F1’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, and has been held for the last three years. China-based promoter Top Speed has now announced an expansion of both its trophy event and the F4 UAE championship.
The trophy event will become a trophy series (with no F4 designation in its name as it takes on the title ‘Formula Trophy’), with this year’s F1 support event on December 6-8 forming the middle of a three-week schedule that begins at Dubai and ends in Abu Dhabi.
A pre-season test day and then a pre-event test session will kick off the action at Dubai, with free practice followed by two 15-minute qualifying sessions and three 25-minute races.
The constraints of the F1 schedule means round two will have an extended practice session and a half-hour qualifying session on Friday, then two 25-minute races on the following days.
Round three supports the Gulf 12 Hours sportscar race and will be fitted into one day, with two pre-event test sessions on Friday and then practice, two qualifying sessions and two races on Saturday.
The top eight finishers from race one will be reversed to form race two’s grid at rounds one and three, with the results of the qualifying sessions used for the other races, and at round two the second race the grid will be set by the second-best laptimes from qualifying.
Each team must have at least two cars, and there is a four-car cap that grows to five if teams have a female driver in their line-up.
F4 UAE meanwhile will expand into F4 Middle East for 2025 by racing in multiple nations. Kuwait Motor Town will host the first two rounds in January, races in Dubai and Abu Dhabi follow in the first two weekends of February and the season finale will begin on February 27 at a to-be-announced Middle Eastern location.
Australian team Evans GP has already confirmed its FTrophy participation, with Kai Daryanani driving one of its cars. He will then be part of its 2025 Formula Regional Middle East line-up after making his category debut with the team at next month’s Macau Grand Prix.
The 19-year-old Indian came 12th in British F4 and 25th in F4 UAE this year, and in 2023 took a win in GB4 as well as coming 10th in F4 South East Asia.
Eurasia Motorsport, a Malaysia-based team, also intends to be on the FTrophy grid.