Photo: FRME
German team PHM Racing has announced five drivers for the upcoming Formula 4 United Arab Emirates season.
The most experienced member of the team’s line-up is Nikita Bedrin, with the 17-year-old Russian stepping down the single-seater ladder to take part.
He drove for PHM in F4 UAE back in 2022, then stuck with them at the start of last year as he moved up to Formula Regional Middle East. The category rookie claimed two wins and two poles, and came seventh in the standings. Following that he made another step up to the FIA Formula 3 Championship with Jenzer Motorsport, and two podiums put him 18th in the standings.
His F4 UAE team-mates for 2024 are far less experienced.
James Egozi started last year in karting, winning the WSK Super Master Series for OK karts. The 16-year-old American then moved into cars with PHM, coming 14th in Italian F4 and eighth in F4 Central European Zone where he won the only two races he contested at the Red Bull Ring.
His countryman Everett Stack did two thirds of the 2023 United States F4 season and failed to score, and will be hoping to land some top-10 finishes in the UAE.
Kamal Mrad is another who combined karts with cars last year, and he did one Italian F4 round and one Euro 4 round with AKM Motorsport before embarking on an extensive testing programme in late 2023.
The least experienced of the five drivers PHM has signed so far is Maximilian Popov, a karting graduate from Russia.
In 2021 he won the Italian championship for OK Junior karts, and came third in the Champions of the Future series. He has spent the last two years in the senior OK category, and started off on a high by finishing second in the WSK Champions Cup. Results were harder to come by after that, although he ended 2022 by coming ninth in the WSK Final Cup and he was seventh in the 2023 South Garda Winter Cup. Popov has been doing F4 testing with PHM since last November.