The new-for-2016 Spirit of Race team have announced Matthieu Vaxiviere and Vladimir Atoev as their drivers for next season’s Formula 3.5 V8 Championship season.
In a press conference set up by SMP Racing of whom sixteen-year-old Atoev is a protégé, the team that took over the entry vacated by International Draco Racing became only the second team to finalise their line-up for 2016.
Vaxiviere is a major coup for the team, with the twenty-one-year-old Frenchman having won three times in 2015 on his way to finishing second in the championship behind Oliver Rowland, and will be entering his third season having competed for Lotus since 2014.
Atoev meanwhile moves up from two years in Formula 4, having finished eleventh in French F4 in 2014 before finishing as runner-up to Niko Kari in the SMP F4 Series last season.
The team will make its bow in the championship in 2016, and was established by AF Corse owner Amato Ferrari, with Vaxiviere and Atoev both testing for the squad in the post-Formula Renault 3.5 Series tests at the back end of 2015.