Photo: Prema
Prema will give Formula 4 debuts to sportscar star Doriane Pin and kart champions Kean Nakamura Berta and Tomass Stolcermanis in the South East Asia series at Sepang.
The Italian squad took part in the previous non-championship round of the series in Macau two weeks ago with four cars, winning both races with Arvid Lindblad. It is now set to run three of those cars for an all-new line-up as the season closes with a double-header in Malaysia.
Frenchwoman Pin raced with Prema in the LMP2 class of the World Endurance Championship this year after becoming European Ferrari Challenge champion in 2022. She is a protege of the Iron Dames project whose founder Deborah Mayer is now a co-owner of Prema.
With Prema not expected to return to WEC in 2024 while it assists sister squad Iron Lynx in running the new factory Lamborghini LMDh effort, speculation has linked 19-year-old Pin to a single-seater switch. Last weekend she took part in an F4 test at Imola with AKM Motorsport.
Also taking part in that test and others have been Japanese-Slovakian Nakamura Berta and Latvia’s Stolcermanis.
Nakamura Berta, part of the Alpine Academy, was European karting champion in the senior OK class in 2022 and tested in F4 with Prema at the end of last year. He then remained in karting with the team, finishing third in the world championship and fifth in the European championship in OK, plus sixth in the World Cup and the European championship for gearbox KZ2 karts.
Stolcermanis has taken part in scouting camps for the Ferrari Driver Academy in the past two years without being selected for a place in its finals. Racing against Nakamura Berta for much of this year, he came fourth in the European championship in OK in third in KZ2.
Among Prema’s rivals in Macau were R-ace GP with Hadrien David and Raphael Narac and both drivers will continue with the team at Sepang.
Championship leader Tiago Rodrigues will not be present after wrapping up the Chinese F4 title last weekend.