Can anyone catch Jonny Edgar? Championship battle is almost run
The climax of the sixth ADAC Formula 4 season is fast approaching. The gripping team-internal duel between the two top drivers, Jonny Edgar (16, England) and Jak Crawford (15, USA), goes into the next round on the penultimate race weekend of the 2020 campaign at the DEKRA Lausitzring (30th October - 1st November). Still hoping to break the dominance of the Van Amersfoort duo and snatch the title in the short time remaining is Elias Seppänen (16, Finland, US Racing). Races 16 to 18 are likely to prove decisive. The venue may be the same as the opening weekend, but the track will have a completely different configuration. This time, the drivers will be competing on a 4.75km variant - i.e. approximately one kilometre longer than the sprint layout - which likewise comprises sections of the oval perimeter and the infield.
Free-to-air TV channel SPORT1 will be showing the races from the High-Speed Academy, and they can also be watched online as a livestream on SPORT1.de, YouTube.com/adac, the Facebook page of the ADAC Formula 4 and adac.de/motorsport.
Jonny Edgar, who leads the championship table on 240 points, would like nothing better than a repeat of his results from the curtain-raiser weekend at the Lausitzring: the Red Bull Junior won the first two races of the season and added a P7 finish in the third. Edgar has led the overall standings since that first visit to the Lausitzring and has shown remarkable consistency throughout. With the exception of the Hockenheimring fixture, he has lifted the winner's trophy at least once on each occasion. Further favourable indications can be found in the statistics from previous years of ADAC Formula 4: in four of the five seasons so far, the winner of the opening race also went on to win the title. The only exception came in 2019, when Theo Pourchaire became champion after Brazil's Gianluca Petecof won the first race at Oschersleben.
But that's all in the past, and Edgar's opponents will certainly not be turning up merely to attend a coronation. First and foremost among them is Jak Crawford, who would dearly like to catch and overhaul his team-mate. "There are still six races to go, and anything can happen," said the young American, who has already proven that he has what it takes to win races. "It should be a good weekend, and we're hoping for some decent points." The same goes for Elias Seppänen, who is the most consistent of the US Racing contingent, together with ADAC Sports Foundation protégé Tim Tramnitz (15, Hamburg).
Tramnitz, who is having a really strong rookie season, will probably not be able to intervene decisively in the fight for the championship. He has 151 points to his account - 89 fewer than championship leader Edgar (240). Far better placed are Crawford (212) and Seppänen (194). The two of them could still prove dangerous to Edgar: if the English teenager has a DNF, the two pursuers could close the gap again in one fell swoop.
In the Best Rookie classification, Tim Tramnitz can wrap up the title as early as this weekend. The 15-year-old from Hamburg has built up a massive lead on 281 points: "I'm definitely a fan of the Lausitzring. I competed in my first ever Formula 4 race there, and the results were also very good. I really like the track a lot, also the layout. I am feeling confident about the rest of the season." In second place on 202 points is his team-mate Oliver Bearman (15, Great Britain), but he has a 79-point deficit on the leader.
The weekend is therefore destined to be a highly tense affair. Contrary to the original plan, it will not be taking place at Zandvoort. Because of the worsening of the pandemic in the Netherlands, the race weekend has been moved to the DEKRA Lausitzring. The races there will go ahead without any spectators in attendance to comply with the biosecurity measures agreed between the ADAC GT Masters and the relevant authorities.
The sixth season of the ADAC High-Speed Academy closes the following weekend with the grand finale at Oschersleben (6th - 8th November). By then at the latest, we will have answers to the question of who will win the championship title and will therefore have the best CV to present to future employers in formula racing.