How an Italian manufacturer is at the heart of single-seater racing’s flourishing middle ground

The dark days of UK single-seater racing in the early 2010s are now, thankfully, long in the past. Back then, British Formula 3 and Formula Renault UK bit the dust, while British Formula Ford was on its last legs. Midway through this decade, we now have three thriving championships: British Formula 4, GB3 and GB4.

The common denominator is Italian constructor Tatuus. It’s probably no more than a coincidence that FRUK collapsed during the 2010-12 era when the company had lost its Formula Renault supply deal to Barazi Epsilon, but it appeared back on these shores in 2016 when MotorSport Vision revamped its ‘outlaw’ F4 series (with spaceframe cars that could never attain FIA recognition) to introduce beefed-up versions of the first-generation Tatuus F4 car: BRDC British F3, now known as GB3, was born.

For 2022, British motorsport governing body MotorSport UK saw the light and introduced the second-generation Tatuus in place of the old Mygales for British F4, which has since gone from strength to strength. And while GB3 has undergone a series of revisions, including an all-new Tatuus for 2025, its ‘little brother’ GB4 simultaneously introduced a down-specced version of the old GB3 model, with grid sizes effectively doubling.

Outside the UK, Tatuus supplies the cars for over a dozen F4 championships worldwide, as well as to the only Formula Regional series that matter (European, Middle East and Oceania), three levels of the IndyCar ladder, plus F1 Academy. So there’s a lot of work going on at its Lombardy facility.

And there’s plenty of excitement too. Several years ago Tatuus joined forces with Autotecnica Motori (ATM), the firm that supplies the Abarth engines for many F4 championships (including the British, where they are serviced by UK power stalwart NBE) and the Alfa Romeo units for some of the FRegional competition (including the defunct W Series). To these newly sister companies was added car parts manufacturer Breda Racing.

Last year, YCOM joined the fold, and in recent weeks majority acquisitions have been secured in Next Solution Technologies as well as big karting names BirelArt, IAME and Kart Republic. The conglomerate was named Korus Group in late October, with ATM veteran Giovanni Delfino as CEO and Tatuus co-founder Gianfranco De Bellis as president.

Delfino poses with the 300th T-421 F4 car built by Tatuus, which supplies more than a dozen F4 championships worldwide

Photo by: Tatuus

The new group means that, eventually, the cars you see racing in British single-seaters – and on livestreams from all over the world – can effectively be produced entirely in-house without any outsourcing, while it spreads its tentacles into the talent pool of karting, from where the next generations of Tatuus car racers are learning their craft.

“It was something which was already in our minds in 2017,” explains Delfino. “Already ATM decided to join on the basis of a group meant to unify some of the niches of Italian motorsport, and to create a one-stop shop to design a car from zero and to produce and develop the car together with all its parts. Tatuus and ATM were the first to join the group and in 2018 also Breda Racing was part of it.”

Plans for further expansion were delayed by the COVID pandemic, before momentum gathered once more. “And so the journey started again,” continues Delfino, “and YCOM joined - it’s a kind of ‘Tatuus of covered wheels’, doing more with hypercars, GTs and supercars. Also they have carbon design and making facilities - you can imagine what that means for us.

“We had the opportunity to have an important brand in karting, so the horizontal expansion was becoming also a vertical expansion in terms of driver career” Giovanni Delfino

“And then three or four months ago we had the opportunity to enter in Next Solution, which is an Italian brand dealing with electronics – all the electronics that you can imagine in a racecar, they have the expertise to design and produce.

“And then we had an opportunity which was a little bit enlarging the philosophy of the group, through some advisors, to enter BirelArt. We were around the table and we were thinking about the original concept of the group: that was to have a group of Italian niches dealing with motorsport to create a 360-degree product.

“That was to do cars. But also we had the opportunity to have an important and famous brand in karting, so the horizontal expansion was becoming also a vertical expansion in terms of driver career. Then we closed also with IAME and Kart Republic.”

Delfino is careful to point out that YCOM will not take over production of cars during a regulation cycle, to avoid political upset: “YCOM will come probably in the third generation of F4 cars, because what we don’t want today is mixing parts and we have chassis coming from one single supplier. I know perfectly in the paddock that if you win with one chassis, all the others will say, ‘OK they are different’, and we don’t want to create rumours like that.”

Alex Ninovic mastered the new-for-2025 Tatuus MSV GB3-025 to take the GB3 title

Photo by: JEP

There is also a balancing act for Tatuus to play. After all, MSV’s GB4 series could be seen to be in competition with British F4, even if it has somehow carved out a space in the marketplace without any adverse effect on any other category.

“For us, Jonathan Palmer [MSV chief] is… I don’t want to call him customer, for us he is a partner because we are also developing together different things," adds Delfino. "We didn’t want to create any conflict with giving cars also to MotorSport UK for F4, so when we do things like that the first thing we do is ask our historical partners for permission to supply also other series. They say, ‘No problem for me’.

“So we also supply MotorSport UK, and the UK official F4 championship is something great because it’s something we had never done in the past [before 2022]. In the UK in the past there were strong chassis and car suppliers and manufacturers, so we were out of the market. Then we were a little bit surprised when MotorSport UK decided to go with another F4 manufacturer [for 2015]… So we were really happy when they finally decided to come to us.”

While modifications for 2026 - aerodynamics and a bigger engine - are being tested on the GB3 car, the greatest attention from the motorsport world at large is on the introduction of the second-generation Formula Regional car: the T-326. This replaces the T-318, which made its competition debut in the W Series and has been the basis in recent seasons of FR’s European and Middle East series as well as Eurocup-3.

Eurocup-3 is switching to the Dallara 326 for next season, powered by the TOM’S-produced, three-cylinder turbo Toyota engine. And FR, in both its European and Middle East championships, has adopted the same powerplant, albeit serviced by ATM. In Europe, that brings to an end over half a century of Renault-powered single-seater championships at this level.

“This generation two was born with at least two different views,” explains Delfino. “First, it was co-designed with the FIA technical department because it will be an official FIA championship – for us being chosen for an official FIA championship means a lot.

“But also this is meant to be a worldwide product called Regional. We will be starting in January 2026 in the Middle East with the first championship with the Gen2. We will continue in Europe with the Formula Regional European Championship, but then we have already started to talk with New Zealand for the new generation car that they will introduce in 2027 [for FR Oceania]. The idea is to link the NZ market to the Japanese market, which would be great.

The Tatuus T-326 is the second-generation Formula Regional car

Photo by: Mattia Negrini

“Also if you look at the engine we have chosen for the second-generation car, the Toyota, this is linking everything – Europe to New Zealand [that series was born out of the Toyota Racing Series] and also to Japan [where FR is already Toyota-powered].

“If we manage to go on with such a project, that will be a different target which we want to achieve. It’s also, let’s say, the best option for the World Cup in Macau.”

It does mean single-seater traditionalists shedding a tear about the end of the Renault group’s involvement at this level of single-seater racing. From the great French generation of the 1970s - Rene Arnoux, Patrick Tambay, Didier Pironi, Alain Prost, the list goes on – to 21st-century Formula Renault champions such as Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, it is hard to think of a manufacturer that has done more to promote junior talent in Europe. And that’s because there isn’t one.

“When you enter Tatuus you still breathe the Formula Renault atmosphere. When they decided to stop with activities other than F1, it was a bit of a surprise” Giovanni Delfino

“Gianfranco [De Bellis] worked at least 30 years with Renault or Alpine,” acknowledges Delfino. “When you enter Tatuus you still breathe the Formula Renault atmosphere. When they decided to stop with other activities other than F1, for us it was a little bit of a surprise.

“Nevertheless we tried a lot to keep them in the loop, saying, ‘OK just give us the engines and ATM will develop an engine so that we can still say that it’s powered by Alpine.’ But in the end there was no will from them. At the moment the relationship has been stopped, but maybe in the future it will start again. I hope so. But having Toyota on board is the same.”

Indeed, Toyota proteges such as Ryan Briscoe and Kamui Kobayashi won FRenault titles in the 2000s. That company, too, has heritage at this level.

In the end, you could say that Tatuus is moving with the times at the most junior end of the single-seater market, but that wouldn’t be quite right. Because now, with the Korus growth and the expansion into karts, it would be more accurate to hail it as defining the times.

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