National athlete Alp Aksoy: My goal is to become the first Turkish Formula 1 driver in 2030

Turkey's young motorsport star Alp Aksoy is stepping into the Formula 4 Italian Championship with Prema Racing following his international success in karting. The 16-year-old athlete has quickly become one of the youngest names representing Turkey in the world arena.

Alp Aksoy, who has already written his name in the history of Turkish motorsports, attracted attention with his outstanding performance in the international arena after starting his karting career at the age of 5. Now he will represent Turkey in the Formula 4 Italian Championship with Prema Racing, one of the most prestigious young driver development teams in the world. The launch took place at the Prema Racing factory in Venice, Italy, in the presence of members of the press, and the young driver's ambitions have created great excitement both at home and in Europe.

INTERNATIONAL SUCCESS AT A YOUNG AGE

Aksoy, who started his karting career at the age of only 5, attracted attention in the European and world karting arena in a short time. At the age of 9, Alp became the youngest athlete to represent Turkey in the international arena by becoming a 'national athlete' and reached the podiums in top-level organizations such as WSK Super Master Series, Champions of the Future, FIA Karting European and World Championships.

Aksoy, who made a great impression by winning the WSK Super Master Series race in Lonato in 2023 among 108 drivers, continued to represent Turkey in Europe's most challenging karting series in the 2024 season. Speaking to the press at the launch event held in Venice, Alp Aksoy made his goals clear:

"I want to win the Formula 4 Italian Championship in 2026. In the long term, I aim to become the first Turkish Formula 1 driver in 2030. I work hard every day to achieve this."

'I LEARNED TO STAY CALM'

The young driver stated that his racing experience abroad gave him an advantage:

"Since I have been racing abroad for 10 years, I have learned to stay calm under pressure. When you make the right decisions, the results are positive."

Alp Aksoy stated that the pilot he looks up to the most is Michael Schumacher and said, "He is my favorite and the pilot I look up to the most."

Evaluating the technical working environment in his new team, Aksoy said:

"We spend very productive time in the data room with the engineers. I give them the right feedback and they adjust the car according to me. The season starts in two weeks."

He also stated that his teammate Luca Baldeseri made a great contribution to him:

"Baldeseri approaches data very differently. He shows me my mistakes clearly. In Formula 4, he has contributed the most to my acceleration."

PRAISE FROM PREMA RACING

Angelo Rosin, founder of Prema Racing, said of the young driver, "The transition from karting to Formula 4 is not easy. We find Alp very fast and very efficient. It is not easy to find youngsters with this character and maturity."

Angelo Rosin, Founder of Prema Racing Team, said: "We started racing in Formula 4 about 2 months ago. It is not as easy as it seems to go from karting to Formula 4. There is a significant difference between them. I take care to prepare the drivers I train in every sense. I find Alp very fast and very effective. Nowadays, it is not easy for young people to have such characteristics. It is not easy to find such young people. As Prema, we pay a lot of attention when selecting pilots. This is not a job that only I do, it is a team job. We get support from our entire team. We look at their approach in the process of discovering young pilots. At the same time, we also take into consideration their abilities. We are also evaluating what kind of approach they are taking from a technical point of view."

COACH TALKS ABOUT 8 YEARS FULL OF PRIDE

Emir Kalafatoğlu, Alp's coach of 8 years, summarized the process as follows:

"We raced Alp in the most difficult international series and he was on the podium in all of them. He successfully passed Prema's 6-month-long tests and got the contract. Now the goal is bigger achievements."

16-year-old Alp Aksoy marked an important milestone in the history of Turkish motorsport with his transition to Formula 4 after his international successes in karting.

Former national athlete and coach Emir Kalafatoğlu said, "I have been Alp's coach for the last 8 years. We started working with Alp when he was 7 years old. We spent a lot of time together. We were happy together, sad together, sometimes angry with each other. But we never lost the respect and love between us, which turned the coach-athlete relationship between us into a brother-sister relationship over time and enabled us to support each other in everything. When I was drawing Alp's career plan, I wanted to plan it with a visionary perspective that had never been done before in Turkey. I wanted him to compete not in the series where we could easily win trophies, but in the most difficult series of the category he competed in internationally. I immediately threw Alp into the ocean. Alp achieved an incredible success and managed to get on the podium at the highest level internationally in every category he competed in. In the last season of his career, Alp competed with Prema Racing's karting team. Many of you may think that he may have made a direct transition from Prema Racing's karting team to the Formula 4 team. This process was not like that. We went through a very difficult acceptance process. This process took exactly 6 months. Prema tested us on 4 different tracks for 8 days. In addition to mental and simulator tests, he subjected us to behavior and data tests on and off the track. Alp successfully passed all of these and managed to get his name on the contract. Prema Racing is currently a team that has trained 7 of the 20 drivers in Formula 1. So we are in good hands, we are taking the right steps. If we are sitting at this table today, it means that we have worked in the right way and achieved the right things. Now our responsibilities and goals are much bigger. That's why we will work much harder. I am confident that Alp will achieve great success with his character, talent and hard work. Now Alp is not just my pilot, he is all of us. In 2025 and 2026, we will compete in 4 different series. Our season starts in 2 weeks. Our second series will start in January. Our main series is the 2026 Italian Formula 4 championship. This championship is the most difficult championship among Formula 4 championships. Our contract is 1+1. We will compete in Formula 4 for one year. Afterwards, we can extend it in case of mutual satisfaction. Our goals are very big. After Formula 4, we want to be champion and move to Formula 3. In 2027, we want to read our National Anthem in Istanbul at Istanbul Park."