Ukrainian Alexander Bondarev won a Formula 4 race for the first time in his career. This happened at the fourth stage of the series in Imola, Italy.
At the Formula 4 level, the Ukrainian driver made his debut last year, having since retained his place in the Italian Prema Racing Team. Since the beginning of the 2025 season, the Ukrainian has had three finishes in the top eight-sixth and two eighth places on the stages in Misano and Mugello.
The Formula 4 stages consist of several races. In Imola, three starts were planned over the weekend, with the second, scheduled for Saturday, August 2, canceled due to time constraints following an accident.
Bondarev finished the first race on the Imola track with a new record of the season — fourth place with a gap of 1.271 seconds from the leader. But the very next day, he came out on top of the podium — he won at the end of 16 laps with a gap of 0.045 seconds from the nearest pursuer, Japanese kin Nakamura-Bert.
All three places on the podium were taken by drivers from Bondarev’s team: Nakamura-Bert and Chinese Newman Chi also represented Prema Racing, bringing the nearest pursuers more than 1.3 seconds behind.
In addition to winning, Bondarev also started from a pole position and scored the fastest goal in the race, with a time of 1:46.998 minutes.
In the overall drivers ‘ standings, Bondarev takes 19th place. At the same time, in the rating of Formula 4 newcomers, the Ukrainian is in sixth position.
Bondarev is a driver of the Williams Academy, a Formula 1 world championship team that he joined in September 2023.
