RP Motorsport has announced Italian teenager Aldo Festante will race for them during the 2018 season of EuroFormula Open, joining Brazilian duo Felipe Drugovich and Guilherme Samaia.
The team traditionally hires at least one Italian to race for them, and in 2018, seventeen-year-old Festante, a podium finisher and pole sitter in the Italian Formula 4 Championship, will be that driver.
“We are very happy for this agreement that will allow us to field a fast and talented driver like Aldo at the wheel of one of our cars in the 2018 season,” said Team Principal Fabio Pampado.
“One of our priorities has always been that to valorise young talents and looking at the results obtained in the last few years we can say that we’ve been able to do it. In this case, the fact of being able to line up an Italian driver again is a further reason for satisfaction.
“We do appreciate Aldo’s human and technical skills: he showed that he had a great desire to emerge, and we will certainly do our best to allow him to grow and show off his qualities.”
Festante says he is pleased to have been given the opportunity in Formula 3 machinery after two years in Formula 4, particularly as he does not have the kind of budget that is generally required to progress in motor sport in the modern age.
“Driving a Formula 3 has given me deep emotions since the very first moment, it’s a car which has a lot of downforce and so a lot of grip, therefore it isn’t easy to take it to the limit but thanks to an accurate job done together with RP Motorsport during the winter testing days I managed to get a good feeling,” said Festante.
“Therefore we decided to enter the championship, it’s a real honour for me to be a part of a system which has been giving loads of opportunities to us young drivers for years, without the need of an unlimited budget. I can’t wait the testing days to begin in order to improve myself and get in the game!”
