Al Dhaheri to join PREMA for 2023 Formula 4 season
Abu Dhabi – Veneto, 3rd January 2023: The 14-year-old from the Emirates will make his car racing debut in the Italian Formula 4 Championship next April, a week after reaching the minimum competition age of 15.
Al Dhaheri has achieved outstanding results in karting winning his first championship, the WSK Euro Series in the 60 Mini category, at the age of nine followed by the WSK Super Master Series in 2019. In 2021, he transitioned to the OKJ class, winning the WSK Champions Cup and the WSK Super Master Series and is now focusing his efforts on preparing the switch to cars.
Moving to single-seaters, will present Al Dhaheri with the toughest challenge of his career, which is why joining the Prema Powerteam is such an exciting development. Prema is one of the oldest and most successful Italian motorsport teams and gives drivers a pathway for developing and graduating through the different formulas right up to F1. Al Dhaheri has already started working with the team to prepare for 2023, producing some impressive testing performances which prove that he is ready for the next step in his racing career.
Angelo Rosin – Team Principal at PREMA Racing said: “We are happy to welcome Al Dhaheri to our team. He is very young but at the same time, very qualified as his winning progression in karting has demonstrated. He showed he has huge potential and room for improvement in early testing, and we will provide him with our support as he learns his ropes with single-seater racing like every rookie driver has to do. As we always say, working with young drivers to help them progress and improve is our mission and to see them succeed is our reward, so we are eager to see where Rashid will go from here.”
In this occasion, Rashid Al Dhaheri commented: “I’m very happy to be part of the team and I feel it’s going to be a really interesting season, especially considering I will be driving in a new championship with a new car and new tracks. It will be very important to learn through the season, improve and work hard with the team in a constant progression.”
About Rashid Al Dhaheri
Rashid Al Dhaheri’s passion for motorsports started from a very young age, growing up just 10 minutes away from Yas Marina Formula 1 circuit, which ignited his passion. After some practice sessions, he attended a karting summer camp in Italy organized by the Italian Karting & Motorsport Federation (ACI-CSAI). Here he immediately demonstrated an aptitude for racing and considerable natural talent.
Rashid has rapidly developed into a young karting racing star who continuously achieves a string of firsts for the Arab world. In March 2019, the young Emirati became the first person from both the Middle East and Asia to became champion of the World Series. He won the championship with a big margin and became the first Mini driver to win three out of four races in the last seven years. Rashid added to this the prestigious WSK Euro Series Championship and won in 2021 another double Championship in the World Series Champions Cup and the World Series Super Series in the fiercly fought OK-Junior category, apart from winning the world’s greatest karting race in Macao.
About PREMA
Founded in 1983 by Angelo Rosin and Giorgio Piccolo, PREMA Racing has become the leading contender in junior single-seater racing. It is widely recognized as the third force in Italian motorsports, sitting just behind F1 teams Ferrari and Alpha Tauri in terms of size, achievements and competition profile.
Not only PREMA entered a wide variety of racing championships, from Formula 2 to Formula 4, but also excelled in all of them.