Academy Report: Sasha's Perfect Weekend

There was a trio of Williams Racing Driver Academy members on the Yas Marina Circuit this weekend in support of the Abu Dhabi GP.

Oleksandr 'Sasha' Bondarev joined Luke Browning and Victor Martins to share the F1 weekend hype for the first time, and he did so in style with winning ways.

With the Formula 2 finale and rookies taking over in FP1, there was plenty going on from the young driver ranks over F1's final three days of 2025.

Time in the Middle East bookended Sasha's 2025 season, with his first full year in single seaters beginning with the F4 Middle East Championship and ending with Formula Trophy, the successor to Formula Trophy UAE.

The advancements our Ukrainian has made over the year racing in Italian F4 and E4 were on display with a contrast in results between his two trips.

While the January and February races resulted in a best finish of P6, it was a double victory around the Yas Marina circuit this time round.

Even better, this proved Sasha's most dominant weekend in cars so far, with two pole positions and fastest laps in both races to showcase the speed he had.

Dedicating the drive to P1 to Ukraine's armed forces, this was a brilliant way to end his season of racing and Sasha will head back home with two more trophies for his cabinet to go with his Italian F4 pair.

2026 will see Bondi back in Italian F4 and E4, where he'll look to build on the successes from this year to mount a championship challenge.

With the F2 title already decided in Qatar, Luke headed into the season finale weekend with nothing to lose and one eye on the FW47.

A third FP1 appearance for the Briton had him replace Alex Albon for the final time this year, and he'll be back in action during the Young Driver Test on Tuesday, too.

Those F1 machinery outings punctuated a final outing in Formula 2 for the year, where Luke fought among the midfield following his P17 qualification.

That meant it was always going to be a tricky two races to advance into the points-scoring positions, and so it proved across both the Sprint Race and Feature Race.

P20 came in Saturday's Sprint, where Luke had a late pit stop that helped him take a fastest lap as a consolation prize, but things fared slightly better on Sunday.

Taking five places in the opening lap, Luke reached the top-10 positions after he deftly avoided a crash at Turn 7 to sit in P9 when the Safety Car took to the track.

Any hopes of finishing the race in those upper places sadly fell away after damage to his floor from incident debris affected his pace.

Stopping alongside Hitech TGR teammate Dino Beganovic, Luke also had to wait in the pit lane for the double-stack stop, plus received a five-second penalty for speeding to further frustrate his final race, eventually taking a P14 classification.

The tightness of the Formula 2 field was in focus on Friday after 19 of the 22 cars found themselves within nine-tenths of the polesitter, with Victor's P7 only 0.293 from a P1 start.

That handed the Frenchman a P3 start in the reverse grid Sprint Race, where a slow getaway dropped the ART driver down to P6 and battling with Beganovic as Ollie Goethe and Nikola Tsolov got by.

Stabilising his pace, Victor maintained position throughout much of the VSC-impacted race, ending the 23 laps by battling with F2 vice-champion driver Jak Crawford.

The two got too close for comfort, with the American losing a front wing end plate when fighting for P6 at the Turn 6-7 chicane that saw Victor lose out and ending the race in P7.

Those two points advanced him to 97 as a season total after his Sunday Feature Race sadly ended on Lap 2.

A spin at Turn 7 from Alex Dunne turned Victor around and he subsequently retired from his season finale to end his Middle Eastern double header with vastly different results after his Feature Race win in Qatar last weekend.