Photo: Macau Grand Prix
Macau Grand Prix winner Ugo Ugochukwu will continue driving an R-ace GP Formula Regional car in the upcoming Middle East championship.
McLaren junior Ugochukwu joined R-ace for his victorious Macau weekend in November after a difficult FRegional European CChampionship campaign with Prema in which he finished 11th in the standings. While the American will resume his relationship with Prema when he steps up to FIA Formula 3 later this year, he will first contest the five-round Middle East series – where he finished seventh with Prema last year – as part of a four-car line-up for R-ace GP.
Also part of that line-up will be Enzo Deligny. The French-Chinese driver joined R-ace GP at the start of 2024, initially contesting three rounds of Formula 4 UAE before stepping up to FREC, where he finished one place behind Ugochukwu in 12th in the points. While not yet confirmed, he is expected to drive for R-ace GP in FREC again this year, but may not retain the backing of Red Bull.
Akshay Bohra and Jin Nakamura, who step up from Italian and Japanese F4 respectively, had both already been confirmed to contest both the Middle East and European championships with the team.
Pinnacle Motorsport has also revealed a four line-up for FRME, including Mexican driver Ernesto Rivera – who was signed as a Red Bull junior during his rookie Spanish F4 campaign in 2024, which he finished fifth overall with Campos Racing, and will make his FRegional debut.
Compatriot Jesse Carrasquedo is somewhat more experienced, having entered the full FRME season last year with R-ace GP and taken a best finish of 11th place. He then started the FREC season with G4 Racing, finishing no higher than 19th in eight races before he rejoined Campos Racing in Eurocup-3, where he took one win from 10 starts to finish eighth in the standings.
Both Giovanni Maschio and Finley Green will be part of Pinnacle’s line-up for the second FRME season in a row, after finishing 21st and 34th in the standings last year. Maschio went on to contest his sophomore FREC campaign, scoring a single point with Race Performance Motorsport, while single-seater newcomer Green entered Eurocup-3 but only ended up starting three races.
Chinese team Origine Motorsport, which contested previous FRME campaigns as R&B Racing, welcomes Ruiqi Liu alongside Zhongwei Wang. Liu drove for PHM Racing in the series last year and has signed with Trident for a second successive season in FREC in 2025, while Wang will enter his third FRME season with the team having also raced in FRegional Japan this year and the GT World Challenge Asia, where he shared his Mercedes-AMG GT3 with factory drivers Ralf Aron and Jules Gounon.