Great spectacle on the track at Paul Ricard in Le Castellet for the first race of the fifth round of the Italian F.4 Championship. A perfect day for Akshay Bohra, the Indian driver from US Racing, who after securing pole position in Race 1 and 2 (second block on the grid for him in Race 3), brought victory home for the US Racing team. The team led by Gerhard Ungar and Ralf Schumacher, who last year led Polish driver Kacper Sztuka to win the title (starting the comeback right at Paul Ricard), celebrated on the podium with Australian Jack Beeton in second place. The poleman had no problems at the start, making a masterful getaway with Beeton on his heels, then made no mistakes on the 5.842-meter French track, winning with a gap of 1.4 seconds. His teammate followed, showing great pace, setting the fastest lap of the race, but had no chance to attempt an overtake. Third across the finish line was Van Amersfoort Racing’s Hiyu Yamakoshi. The Japanese driver paid for some uncertainty at the start, immediately finding himself in a battle with Brazilian Matheus Ferreira. The duel between the two was particularly intense at the first corner, with Yamakoshi aggressively defending his position from a fiercely attacking Ferreira. After the race, Yamakoshi was penalized five seconds for going off track at turns 1-2, dropping to sixth. Ferreira thus completed an all US Racing podium. Other drivers penalized for track limits violations included Alpine Academy’s Kabir Anurag (US Racing), Kamal Mrad (PHM AIX Racing), Andrija Kostic (Van Amersfoort Racing), Enea Frey (Jenzer Motorsport), and Ethan Ischer (Jenzer Motorsport). All received a five-second penalty added to their overall race time.
In fourth place was junior Mercedes driver Alex Powell. The Jamaican-American from Prema also took the Rookie class win, consolidating his lead in the standings. Powell was fully in the fight for the third podium place overall, keeping the two ahead always within close range. Fifth place and second in the Rookie class went to Prema Racing’s Japanese Alpine Academy driver Kean Nakamura-Berta. He was followed across the line by his Emirati teammate Rashid Al Dhaheri. Another Prema Racing driver in the top 10 was Indian Dion Gowda in eighth place. The battle between the two during the race was intense, also involving Van Amersfoort Racing’s Swedish driver Gustav Jonsson. Jonsson, however, broke his front wing in a contact and was forced to pit. Gianmarco Pradel, who crossed the line ninth, received a five-second penalty for a tough battle with Tomass Stolcermanis. The Australian US Racing driver thus finished outside the points, yielding to his German teammate Maxim Rehm, who, in addition, completed the Rookie podium. Rehm himself was involved in an intense battle with Stolcermanis in Race 1. The Latvian Prema Racing driver ended up tenth. Among the other battles that earned highlights, the in-house duel between PHM AIX Racing drivers Maksimilian Popov and Kamal Mrad for P20 was particularly spectacular. Exciting also was the fight for P16, behind Real Racing’s Romanian driver Luca Viisoreanu, with Van Amersfoort Racing’s Andrija Kostic pursued by AKM Motorsport’s Emanuele Olivieri, Jenzer Motorsport’s Swiss driver Ethan Ischer, and Chinese Taipei’s Enzo Yeh, representing R-ace GP.
More trouble for Freddie Slater’s car. The Championship leader started from the 24th grid block after an unfortunate qualifying session and was forced to pit during the race. The British Prema Racing driver, however, has two great opportunities to make up for it, starting fourth in Race 2 and from pole in the weekend’s final race.
The standings at the top of the leaderboard remain unchanged after Race 1, with Slater in the lead at 240 points, followed by Yamakoshi with 169. Bohra is in third place with 159, then Powell with 134. Jack Beeton rounds out the top 5 with 122 points.
Akshay Bohra: “It’s been a great Saturday. Double pole position, P2 for Race 3. Starting the weekend with the first win of the season, I can’t thank the team enough for what they have done. The first race was very good, very clean. I had a good start, from then I managed my race, I tried not to overuse the tires in the first part. In some moments we were close, but I think it was all under control. Obviously, the goal is to make it three out of three, to achieve that we need to focus on our process.”
Jack Beeton: “the car seems really strong. The first win for the team all season, and also a one-two on the podium. It shows that what we’ve been doing all season, what we’ve been working on, is finally paying off. Hopefully, it stays like this for the rest of the season. Heading into the race, I knew it would be difficult to overtake, and Akshay did a better job in qualifying. He started ahead and already had the advantage. Basically, after the first lap, when I wasn’t ahead, I knew it would be almost impossible to overtake. I pushed as hard as I could to force him into a mistake, staying close the whole race. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it, hats off to him, he made no mistakes. It was still a nice race.”
Alex Powell: “It was a pretty good race in general. Not much went on, we were so close between the three of us, I mean third, fourth, and fifth. We were fighting for the last podium spot, unfortunately, which is kind of a stalemate all the time. I couldn’t make much of it. In the end, it all came down to the start, where you funnel out, because then it’s quite difficult to overtake. Not a bad race, we are just missing something. I think we need to look back, our pace is quite strong, we just need to make the most of it now, really. We have two more races this weekend, and I’m sure we can get some good results with the pace we have.”