Photo: FRME
Prema will provide technical support to the Mumbai Falcons team again this year, with the partnership aiming to defend its Formula Regional Middle East and Formula 4 United Arab Emirates titles.
There will be a four-car attack in both championships, with Prema/Mumbai Falcon’s FRME line-up consisting of Rafael Camara and F4 graduates Arvid Lindblad, Ugo Ugochukwu and James Wharton.
Ferrari junior Camara came third in the standings last year with six podiums, then took two wins and three poles en route to fifth in the FRegional Europe standings with Prema. He will be aiming for the title in both championships in 2024.
Ugochukwu and Wharton will be his team-mates in Europe as well as in the UAE. McLaren junior Ugochukwu won the Euro 4 title, came second in Italian F4 and third in F4 UAE last year, while Wharton won the UAE title, was Euro 4 runner-up and fourth in Italian F4.
Lindblad was their rival in all of those series, with the Red Bull junior taking one victory in the UAE and seven in Italy. The Red Bull junior will be part of Prema’s FIA Formula 3 Championship line-up later this year, and will be using FRME to help him adapt with what would be a big step up the single-seater ladder.
In F4 UAE, Mumbai Falcons will field Kean Nakamura Berta, British F4 race-winner Dion Gowda, Alex Powell and Ginetta Junior champion and Euro 4 star Freddie Slater. Under its own banner, Prema will run three further cars for Rashid Al Dhaheri, Doriane Pin and Tomass Stolcermanis.
Al Dhaheri, Nakamura, Powell and Slater had already been confirmed as Prema’s line-up for the 2024 Euro 4 and Italian F4 seasons.
Alpine junior Nakamura raced for Prema’s karting squad last year. He came third in the CIK-FIA World championship, fifth in the European championship and second in the Champions of the Future series for OK karts. In 2022 he was a factory Kart Republic driver and won the European championship and the WSK Euro Series as well as coming second in the WSK Super Master Series.
He made his single-seater debut less than two months ago in F4 South East Asia, contesting two rounds with Prema and taking two poles and a podium. His team-mate there was Pin, who was championship runner-up in her maiden single-seater programme, with Al Dhaheri and Stolcermanis also making cameos with Prema that resulted in podiums.
Stolcermanis – who will only do the final two F4 UAE rounds – has taken part in Ferrari Driver Academy scouting camps for the past two years without being selected for a place in its finals. He came fourth in the 2023 European championship for OK karts and third in the KZ2 shifter kart equivalent.
Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 junior Powell is another of Prema’s karting graduates, and took top-10 finishes from 2023’s last two Italian F4 rounds and the F4 UAE Trophy as he got a first taste of car racing. He was CotF champion and European championship runner-up on OK karts, and runner-up in the FIA’s KZ2 World Cup.