Solenn Amrouche completes single seater rookie season in Hoosier Formula Cup with top-10

Solenn Amrouche completed the Hoosier Formula Cup season at Paul Ricard with a determined recovery drive from the pit lane to P10 in race two; where despite a challenging weekend the single seater rookie displayed good pace and improvements.

Photo credits: @ethan._.grm

Solenn Amrouche completed the Hoosier Formula Cup season at Paul Ricard with a determined recovery drive from the pit lane to P10 in race two. Although her push for another top-10 finish in race three ended in retirement, she showed strong pace and resilience throughout the weekend.

Solenn Amrouche’s first ever single-seater season in the Hoosier Formula Cup began in March, at the Circuit Paul Ricard. Since then, she was constantly near the top, with a P5 finish at the French circuit. At Mugello, during the next round of the championship, she consistently finished within the top-10, concluding the weekend with finishes of P7, P6, and P8. At Portimão she improved on her best finish, ending race 2 of the weekend in P4.

Amrouche was regularly near the podium and she eventually got her first taste of the top three at Motorland Aragón, where she finished P3 overall and P2 in the rookie classification in the first race of the weekend. A month after that, came the penultimate round of the season at Magny-Cours, where she finished in the top-10 in two out of three races.

For the season finale, Hoosier Formula Cup came back returned to the circuit where the season started – Circuit Paul Ricard. Drivers got their first taste of the French venue in March and they were back in the French Riviera on Friday, when the paid practice and private practice took place. Across the day Amrouche completed 42 laps, acquainting herself with the conditions in Le Castellet. To add to that, she completed a further eight laps in the Saturday morning private practice session.

The first important sessions of the weekend were the two qualifying sessions that took place around noon on Saturday. Unfortunately, Solenn Amrouche could not compete in both of them, due to an incident. In Q1 just after heading out on her out-lap, she spun exiting Turn 6. When it seemed like she could restart her car, she was collected by Gilles Depierre and as a result neither of them could take part in the qualifying. Therefore, Amrouche was to start races one and two from the back of the grid.

Due to damage sustained in the crash Amrouche did not start the first race. She was back in the car for race two, which started on Sunday morning. After starting from the pit lane, she was up to P14 by lap 2, as two cars did not take the start and two rookies—André Rodriguez and Hugo Martiniello—encountered issues on the opening lap.

Her goal for this race was to make the most out of the start from the back, recovering as much as possible; on lap 2, she was eight seconds behind her teammate Thierry Malhomme in P13, but she was able to bridge that gap in just three laps. In the meantime, Jérémy Clavaud had to pit, which gained Amrouche another position. All in all, after overtaking Malhomme, the No. 95 car of Amrouche was running P12.

Her next target was another teammate, Alain Bucher. She closed down the four-second gap in just one lap and on lap 7 she made a move on Bucher down the inside of turn 9. For the closing minutes of the race, Amrouche was in pursuit of a top-10 finish and it seemed like a difficult task to achieve, but on the last lap Walter Rykart fell from P9 to P11, allowing the Lamo Racing Car driver to finish her first race of the weekend in P10 overall and P6 in the rookie class, rounding out a remarkable charge.

The season concluded later on Sunday with race three. Amrouche lined up in fifteenth on the grid and as the red light went out, a huge incident took place at the front of the grid. Aaron Ferrazzano squeezed Dylan Estre, and as a consequence Mateo Valente, into the wall. Both Estre and Valente were out of the race, and Ferrazzano received a five-second stop and go penalty. 

The safety car was deployed and amid the chaos, Amrouche moved up to P11 overall and P5 in the rookie class. Despite the big incident, the neutralization ended just after a lap. The restart was calm and Amrouche was chasing Frédéric Boillot for P10, but she had to look behind her as Clemente Huerta was close behind.

On lap 4 Ferrazzano went into the pits to serve his penalty and allowed Amrouche to get into the top-10. A lap later, having stayed close to Boillot, she made another move, this time for P9. Her pace was very good, as on the next lap Solenn was battling even for P7, but the race did not end as she had hoped: Amrouche went off in turn 1 and consequently retired from the race.

The season finale proved to be a challenging one for Amrouche, as she finished only one of the races. Yet across the season, improvement in her pace could be clearly seen. Without any prior experience in single-seaters, Solenn had moments where she battled on equal terms with the front-runners in the series, with the cherry on top being the podium scored in Motorland Aragón. 2026 plans for Amrouche are not yet known, but she might continue her single seater journey, as she has been spotted testing GB4 Championship machinery at Snetterton Circuit with Fox Motorsport in the following days.