Al Dhaheri and Bondarev extend series leads with Abu Dhabi victories

• Mercedes junior Rashid Al Dhaheri beats Kean Nakamura-Berta in Formula Regional Middle East Trophy

• Williams protégé Oleksandr Bondarev leads home Andy Consani as UAE4 Series battle resumes

• Rookie honours at start of second weekend go to Nakamura-Berta and Kenzo Craigie

Abu Dhabi, January 24, 2026: Rashid Al Dhaheri and Oleksandr Bondarev were the star turns on the opening day of competitive action for the second round of the 2026 Formula Regional Middle East Trophy (FRME) and UAE4 Series at Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina Circuit.

 

Seventeen-year-old Abu Dhabi native Al Dhaheri, recently installed on the Mercedes Formula 1 team’s junior programme, was the class of the Formula Regional field to register his second win of the season with R-ace GP and extend his points lead. And it was a similar story in UAE4: again it was the pre-weekend points leader, Williams F1-backed 16-year-old Bondarev, stretching an advantage with a second victory, the Ukrainian leading all the way in his Prema-run Mumbai Falcons Racing car.

 

Al Dhaheri’s main opposition in Formula Regional came from Kean Nakamura-Berta, who bounced back from a tough opening weekend. The London-born Japanese-Slovak, like Bondarev a Williams recruit and Mumbai Falcons racer, qualified on pole. After losing the initiative at the start, Nakamura-Berta kept the victor on his toes throughout, and also took Rookie honours. Third, thanks to winning an exciting fight with Sebastian Wheldon, was Jamaican-American Alex Powell with Pinnacle Motorsport.

 

Bondarev, meanwhile, picked up again on his rivalry from the opening weekend with Mercedes F1 protégé Andy Consani. This time, the R-ace GP-run Frenchman had to give best, but there is still everything to play for in the UAE4 Series title battle. Red Bull Junior Scott Kin Lindblom took a brilliant pole in his Hitech car, but the Swede lost ground at the start and had to settle for third. Another Mercedes-supported R-ace driver, Briton Kenzo Craigie, took Rookie honours in fourth overall.

 

Action continues with two more races for each series on Sunday at Yas Marina, where this weekend the 4.572km Corkscrew layout is being used. This turns the drivers into a plunging downhill section just after Turn 3 on the conventional Grand Prix circuit, rejoining on the long straight that leads to Turn 6.

Formula Regional Middle East Trophy

Race 1

1st Rashid Al Dhaheri/R-ace GP

2nd Kean Nakamura-Berta/Mumbai Falcons Racing Limited

3rd Alex Powell/Pinnacle Motorsport

UAE4 Series

Race 1

1st Oleksandr Bondarev/Mumbai Falcons Racing Limited

2nd Andy Consani/R-ace GP

3rd Scott Kin Lindblom/Hitech

Formula Regional Middle East Trophy

Race 1

After his enormously successful Formula 4 season in 2025, Kean Nakamura-Berta needed to bounce back following a frustrating debut race weekend in Formula Regional. This he did in superb style to beat Rashid Al Dhaheri to pole position thanks to his quickest time in the opening qualifying session. But Nakamura-Berta could not maintain his advantage at the start, with Al Dhaheri getting a better launch and slicing down the inside into the opening corner.

 

By the end of the second lap, Al Dhaheri was almost 1.5 seconds in front, and the gap oscillated around this mark for 20 minutes or so. But then there was drama. Felix Fu Yuhao attempted a move down the inside of Turn 6, but Alceu Feldmann Neto turned in to claim the line and they made contact, with the Brazilian being launched upside down. The race was red-flagged while the unharmed Feldmann Neto’s incident was attended to, with time for four more laps of racing after the restart. Al Dhaheri made no mistake during this short sprint, with Nakamura-Berta in second.

 

The red flag was unfortunately timed for Sebastian Wheldon. He had been passed around the outside by Alex Powell immediately after the start, and the Anglo-American Mumbai Falcons racer spent much of the first 11 laps trying to get back on terms. By lap 12, Wheldon was bidding around the outside of Powell at Turn 9 and Turn 12, only for the race to be halted. Once it had restarted, Wheldon took up the challenge again, but his efforts instead left him vulnerable to Yuki Sano on the final lap. To rub salt into Wheldon’s wounds, half a lap from home he was hit with a five-second penalty for repeated track-limits offences. While Powell brought his Pinnacle Motorsport car home in third, Wheldon was finally classified seventh and R-ace GP’s Japanese Toyota protégé Sano promoted to fourth.

 

Up to fifth in the results came the G4 Racing car of Artem Severiukhin, who completed the Rookie top three behind Nakamura-Berta and Powell. Behind him in sixth was the Alpine F1 team’s Singaporean junior Kabir Anurag for ART Grand Prix. The Trident pair of Serbian Andrija Kostić and Maksimilian Popov were next home, split in the results by the penalised Wheldon, but Kostić was excluded after the race for a technical infringement. That meant Popov landed eighth place in the final classification.

 

Portuguese Francisco Macedo (Van Amersfoort Racing) grabbed what became ninth position from Kazakhstan’s Alexander Abkhazava (MP Motorsport). Just outside the top 10, and therefore earning the front-row positions on the reversed grid for race two, were Poland’s Jan Przyrowski (RPM) and Australian Alex Ninovic (Rodin Motorsport).

UAE4 Series

Race 1

Scott Kin Lindblom more than made up for his tribulations in the opening weekend by taking pole position in the first qualifying session by a clear 0.319 seconds from Oleksandr Bondarev. A red flag with two and a half minutes remaining signified that Bondarev’s Mumbai Falcons team-mate Niccolò Maccagnani was stranded with a technical problem on the Formula 1 start-finish straight. Bondarev was on a hot lap at the time, and the early termination of the session meant the grid was set.

 

Lindblom, however, made a poor start, so it was Bondarev who led away from Maccagnani, while Andy Consani bravely went around the outside of the Italian Ferrari protégé at Turns 10 and 11 to wrest second place. Maccagnani now came under intense pressure from the recovering Lindblom, and their frenetic battle enabled the leading pair of Bondarev and Consani to extend a huge advantage by the end of the first lap.

 

Then the race was neutralised by the first appearance of the safety car due to a collision further down the field. While Thomas Ingram Hill went to the pits for a new front wing, the cars of Bernardo Bernoldi and Brock Burton were left stranded in the middle of the circuit between Turns 6 and 7, with each needing recovery. Ingram Hill was adjudged to be at fault and given a time penalty.

 

Hopes that Bondarev and Consani would stage a repeat of their thrilling battle for the win in the final race of the opening weekend seemed to be denied when the Ukrainian began gradually pulling out an advantage at the restart. But then Consani began coming back at him with a few laps to go. The gap was down to 0.8s when the safety car appeared for the second time, with the race finishing under caution. This time, Lucas Pasquinetti had backed into the barriers at the narrow Turn 13 after contact from Elia Weiss, who was given a time penalty for his role in the incident.

 

Behind the leading duo, Lindblom got the break he needed when Maccagnani was too late on the brakes into the Corkscrew section on the first lap after the restart and ran wide. That also gave Kenzo Craigie the opportunity he required, R-ace GP’s young Briton pulling off a fine move on Maccagnani – around the outside of Turn 6, and taking the inside for Turn 7. Maccagnani attempted to fight back, but locked up at Turn 9, allowing Adam Al Azhari into fifth.

 

Lindblom therefore completed the podium in third, with Craigie taking Rookie honours in fourth and the Yas Heat Racing car of Dubai ace Al Azhari fifth. Maccagnani settled in for a run to sixth ahead of Prema Racing’s Romanian David Cosma-Cristofor. In the battle for eighth – and second in the Rookie class – Spanish McLaren junior Christian Costoya (Prema) tried everything he knew, but was unable to find a way past Mumbai Falcons-run Turk Alp Aksoy.

 

There was a frenetic fight for the final point, with Dutchman Kasper Schormans, in his first race of 2026 with Evans GP, trying repeatedly to pass Rowan Campbell-Pilling (Pinnacle Motorsport). That ended with Schormans making contact with the rear of Campbell-Pilling, sending him into a spin at Turn 6. Campbell-Pilling’s fellow Briton Jarrett Clark (Xcel Motorsport) leapfrogged Schormans for 10th, before the Dutchman recovered the position. After the race, Schormans was penalised five seconds for the incident, dropping him to 17th. That gave Clark 10th ahead of Qatari Bader Al Sulaiti (QMMF by Hitech), while 12th for Emily Cotty (R-ace) gives the Brit pole on the reversed grid for race two.