Academy Report: Championship lead for Kean, whilst Sandro, Sasha and Luke keep building
A championship lead for our FREC racer, double points for Sandro, and a landmark qualifying result for Luke in Japan
Published
20 JUL 2026
Est. reading time
3 min
Four members of the Atlassian Williams F1 Team Driver Academy were in action across Europe and Asia this past weekend.
Read on to discover how our our stars of the future fared…
Alessandro Giusti
Formula 3
Spa served up another mixed weekend for Sandro, though points finishes in both races will provide some encouragement ahead of the closing stretch of the season. Practice and qualifying were difficult, and Sandro found himself outside the top fifteen.
The Sprint Race, however, told a different story. He made sharp progress through the order to bring home P9, and carried that momentum into Sunday's Feature, where he matched the result to double up on points on a circuit that had looked challenging on Friday.
Two P9 finishes at Spa is a foundation to build on, and with Budapest next, Sandro will be looking to convert the race-day pace into a qualifying position that reflects it.
Kean Nakamura-Berta
Formula Regional European Championship
It was a landmark weekend for Kean as he goes into the summer break as the FREC championship leader after his strongest performance of the season at Paul Ricard.
He set the tone from the first qualifying session, claiming pole position for race 1 and converting it into victory, his third win of the campaign. Race 2 was trickier from P5 on the grid, but Kean fought his way through to cross the line fourth, and a post-race penalty for a rival promoted him to P3 and another podium visit.
Kean's consistent points haul and results elsewhere means he now sits at the top of the FREC drivers' championship, the first time he has led the table outright. He’ll return to action in the series at the penultimate round at Imola in September.
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Oleksandr Bondarev
E4 Championship
A difficult opening day at Paul Ricard for Sasha, before a strong recovery across the rest of the weekend. Race 1 was a tough one, having started from P6, he had climbed to P5 before contact sent him wide and down to P33, before recovering in P27.
He regrouped well for Race 2, climbing from P16 to P12, and carried that momentum into Race 3 where he converted a P6 start into a P5 finish, his best result of the weekend and a return to the form he showed at Vallelunga.
He sits P7 in the standings with the final round still to come at Monza in October.
Luke Browning
Super Formula
A triple-header weekend in Japan made for one of the busiest stints of Luke's Super Formula season, and it produced the standout qualifying result of his career in the series so far.
Luke qualified third for round 6 in wet conditions, his best qualifying result in the championship, and ran with the leading pack in the early stages before losing positions after his stop, coming home in eighth."Ultimately, I finished the race in 8th place, but I'm glad I was able to score some points,” Luke shared post-round 6.
“I had a great start, and I was able to lap at a very strong pace during the first stint. However, I lost positions after the pit stop. Perhaps I should have pitted a little earlier. [Tadasuke] Makino overtook me from behind, but the two Team Dandelion cars were very fast, and it didn't come down to a battle, so I congratulate them.
“I will be starting from the back tomorrow, and it will be difficult to catch up in dry conditions, so I want to learn as much as I can and find something that will help me get a little closer to the benchmark car.”
Sunday brought the makeup Round 3 sprint and the full-distance Round 7, and as Luke acknowledged, he was starting from deep in the field for both, taking learnings where he could.
He would finish P10 in the rearranged round 3, and P17 in round 7. Next up for Luke will be a trip to Sportsland Sugo for round 8 in August.
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