The E4 Championship is back, ready to launch its fourth season. The action gets underway from Friday, July 3 to Sunday, July 5 at the Piero Taruffi Circuit in Vallelunga, Campagnano di Roma (RM), which will host the opening round of the three-event series promoted by ACI Sport and WSK Promotion.
Introduced in 2023 alongside the seven-round Italian F4 Championship, the E4 Championship features a shorter yet highly competitive calendar, where every point can prove decisive and there is little room for error.
The technical package remains identical to the Italian Championship, with Tatuus T421 chassis fitted with Pirelli tyres and engines prepared by Auto Tecnica Motori.
A total of 36 drivers representing 25 different nations are set to take to the track for the opening event of the season.
Ten teams will line up on the grid. AKM Motorsport, the Antonelli family-run team, will field a two-car entry featuring ACI Team Italia driver Vittorio Orsini alongside Australia's George Proudford-Nalder. Italian outfit Cram Motorsport will compete with a single car entrusted to American driver Andre Rodriguez. PHM Racing will enter four cars for Iacopo Martinese, another ACI Team Italia representative in Formula 4, together with Oscar Repetto, Roland Kuklane and Alexander Chartier.
Prema Racing will field the largest entry with seven cars. The Italian squad will line up home favourite Niccolò Maccagnani alongside Spain's Christian Costoya and Ukraine's Oleksandr Bondarev.
The trio also represent three different Formula 1 junior programmes, with Maccagnani backed by the Ferrari Driver Academy, Costoya by the McLaren Driver Development Programme and Bondarev by the Williams Racing Driver Academy. Completing the Prema line-up are China's Kwan Zheng, Türkiye's Alp Aksoy and Switzerland's George Zasov.
Scuderia Buell will fly the Argentine flag with Joaquin Rubino. R-ace GP arrives with a five-car line-up featuring Mercedes Junior Team drivers Andy Consani and Kenzo Craigie, together with Tamas Gender and French-Greek brothers Philippe-Armand and Jean Paul Karras.
Romanian outfit Real Racing will field Denmark's Knud Nielsen. Trident Motorsport will enter five cars for Brazilian second-generation racer Bernaldo "Beco" Bernoldi, fellow Brazilian Augustus Toniolo, Switzerland's Florentin Hattemer, Bulgaria's Lyuboslav Ruykov and Czech driver Dominik Simnek.
US Racing will also field seven Tatuus cars, relying on Sicily's Ludovico Busso, Spanish-British driver Edward Robinson and Australian Noah Killion, who recently claimed his first race win in the Italian Championship. Also among the standout performers of the opening part of the season is Finland's Luka Sammalisto, who has already secured two consecutive hat-tricks in the Italian series. Ary Bansal, Arjen Kraling and Oleksandr Savinkov complete a line-up that has repeatedly demonstrated outstanding form throughout the season.
Van Amersfoort Racing will represent the Netherlands with a three-car line-up featuring Aleksander Ruta, Pedro Lima and Thomas Bearman.
Hall of Fame
The inaugural E4 Championship title, in 2023, was claimed by Ugo Ugochukwu with Prema Racing. One year later, Akshay Bohra secured the 2024 crown with US Racing. Reigning champion Kean Nakamura-Berta claimed the 2025 title with Prema Racing, becoming the first driver to complete the Formula 4 "double" by winning both the E4 Championship and the Italian F4 Championship in the same season.
Weekend schedule
The event will feature three races of 30 minutes plus one lap, marking a return to the traditional Formula 4 race format used in Italy.
Track action begins on Friday, July 3 with two 40-minute free practice sessions scheduled for 9:35 and 13:50.
Qualifying will take place on Saturday morning, July 4, with the first session running from 9:40 to 10:00, followed by the second session from 10:10 to 10:30.
All drivers will take part in both qualifying sessions. The classification from the first session will determine the grid for Race 1, while the second session will set the grid for Race 2. The grid for Race 3 will instead be decided by each driver's second-fastest lap recorded across the two qualifying sessions.
Race 1 will get underway on Saturday, July 4 at 14:40. Race 2 and Race 3 are scheduled for Sunday, July 5, at 10:00 and 17:00 respectively.