Photo: Dutch Photo Agency
The finalists have been named for the seventh running of the Richard Mille Young Talent Academy shootout, which awards a paid-for seat in Spanish Formula 4 as its prize.
Six drivers have been chosen to contest the shootout, and they are regular karting rivals. There are the French trio of Andy Consani, Andrea Dupe and Louis Iglesias, Scotland’s Zac Drummond, Belgium’s Ean Eyckmans and Italian talent Sebastiano Pavan.
Iglesias was a finalist in 2023, and came eighth in the CIK-FIA World championship for OK karts that year. Eyckmans and Dupe were 15th and 23rd respectively in that race.
Eyckmans was 11th in the European championship, and in the Champions of the Future series Pavan, Inglesias and Eyckmans came 10th, 14th and 19th.
Consani and Drummond were primarily racing OK Junior karts in 2023, with Consani finishing ninth in the World championship and 16th in the European championship, which Drummond was seventh in.
The first event of 2024 on the finalists’ OK kart schedule was the WSK Champions Cup and Eyckmans and Drummond finished sixth and seventh. Eyckmans was then champion of WSK’s Super Master Series, with Pavan third.
In the European championship, Iglesias was fourth in the standings, Pavan and Drummond were 14th and 15th, while the others were outside of the top 20.
The CotF and WSK Euro Series are still ongoing, with Drummond currently fifth in the former while the other finalists all outside the top 20, and in the latter Consani and Drummond are currently second and third, with Eyckmans and Dupe in eighth and 11th.
To be eligible for consideration for the shootout, drivers had to be born between January 1 2007 and April 1 2010, not be a member of any driver management group and have a minimum experience level of having raced in international competitions in senior karting.
While previously one shootout spot was reserved for a driver from Birel ART’s factory karting team (or a satellite squad), for 2024 three spots were reserved for drivers from the team and Lennox Racing, the factory operation for the Charles Leclerc line of karts Birel ART manufactures.
There will be two parts to the two-day shootout in early October. Italian driver training firm Formula Medicine will conduct physical and psychological tests (split into ‘athletic’ and ‘mental’ sessions’) on the finalists, who will then drive F4 cars run by MP Motorsport at Jerez. The winner will race for MP in Spanish F4.
All Road Management organises the shootout, and is run by Nicolas Todt. He is also Birel ART’s assistant director.
The Ferrari Driver Academy is running its Asia Pacific and Oceania Selection Programme at Sepang on September 15-18 with 13 drivers, who are contending for a place in the FDA Scouting World Finals.
Australians Tyler Calleja, Harrison Duske, Lincoln Evans, Seth Gilmore, Cohen Kokotovich, JesseJames Samuels, Nicolas Stati, Costa Toparis and Dante Vinci, Azerbaijan’s Visal Raman, Indian talent Arjun Chheda, Chinese F4 champion Tiago Rodrigues and Japan’s Sena Tsukamoto make up the 13.