Le Castellet - Gabriel Gomez leaves the opening round of the E4 Championship as the leader. The Brazilian driver for US Racing collected 68 points thanks to two wins and one second place, taking the first lead of the season. After his victory in Race 1 and a second-place finish in Race 2, Gomez returned to the top step of the podium in Race 3, delivering an impeccable performance from pole position. From there, he managed to keep cool under pressure from Kean Nakamura-Berta, who was constantly chasing from behind.
The Slovak-Japanese driver for Prema Racing, already second in Race 1 and third in Race 2, came close to victory again but had to settle for second place in Race 3. Although his first win in the E4 Championship will have to wait until Mugello, Nakamura-Berta collected 51 points, placing him second in the overall standings.
Third across the line in Race 3, Sebastian Wheldon, also racing for Prema Racing, completed a solid weekend with two podiums and a fourth-place finish. His total of 42 points puts him fourth in the standings, just behind Reno Francot of PHM Racing (43 points), the winner of Race 2.
The final race of the weekend lived up to expectations, delivering excitement from lights out to the chequered flag. There were intense battles throughout the points-scoring zone, starting with a strong performance from Alex Powell. The Mercedes junior driver with R-ace GP finished fourth, gaining two positions from the start.
Behind him came Serbian driver Andrija Kostic, racing for US Racing, who took fifth ahead of Reno Francot. Oleksandr Bondarev of Prema Racing finished seventh, scoring his third Rookie win of the weekend, having placed inside the top ten in all races with consistently competitive pace. Eighth went to Swiss driver Enea Frey of Jenzer Motorsport, who finished ahead of Ary Bansal of US Racing after a tight and hard-fought battle, with the two crossing the line nearly side by side. Completing the top ten was Aleksandr Ruta with Van Amersfoort Racing, who also secured second place in the Rookie standings.
The battle for the top ten was particularly fierce, with several notable incidents. Among them, the most significant was between Luca Viisoreanu (Real Racing) and Maskimilian Popov (Van Amersfoort Racing), as the Romanian driver hit Popov from behind while the latter was running in tenth place. As a result, Viisoreanu received a 25-second time penalty, the same sanction applied to Prema drivers Zenrui Chi and Salim Hanna. Chi, in particular, had managed a strong recovery to eleventh place after stalling on the grid. However, he was penalised for contact that caused the retirement of Emily Cotty (R-ace GP).
Third-best Rookie in Race 3 was Guy Albag (R-ace GP), fourteenth overall. The victory in the female classification went to Californian driver Payton Westcott (Van Amersfoort Racing), who finished sixteenth overall, ahead of Ginevra Panzeri (AKM Motorsport) in twentieth.
Gabriel Gomez: "It was a great weekend. It’s very good to start the Championship like this. For sure, it’s just the first round, but anyway, it’s really good. I’m very proud of all the work with the team this week; they worked very hard. In qualifying it was already good, but the race pace was really amazing during the three races. For sure, I wanted to get three wins, but two wins and P2 is really, really good. The Championship points are what’s most important at the moment. Race 3, maybe looking from the outside, it looked quite easy, but for sure it wasn’t. I managed a good start and got a little bit of a gap; then Kean closed a little bit, it was half a second; then I pulled a bit away and it was a second. It’s very difficult to manage the tyres. It was a race to manage the tyres until the very end, but then we had an amazing pace for the last part of the race, when I pushed again and could make a bigger gap in the last few laps. I’m very, very happy with all the work, and I think everyone should be proud of this round. Now we keep pushing for the next one, to be even more on top, and keep going like this!"
Kean Nakamura-Berta: "Three times on the podium, it’s not too bad. Starting this week, my main engineer had some problems and he couldn’t really be here. He’ll be back in Imola; he has been working hard from England trying to help out, so obviously that was not the best way to start a brand new championship. My current engineer and I, as a team, gave our best, but Gabriel always had an answer for us. The last race is quite promising. I dropped back a bit at the start, trying to look after the tyres; we gave it a go towards the end of the race, but he had something left in reserve. A big thanks to Prema: even though the results weren’t what we aimed for, it’s still a good weekend. Not the way I wanted to start the Championship, but three podiums isn’t too bad, to be honest. We’ll give it our best at Mugello for the next round of the E4, but now my eyes are on Imola for the Italian."
Sebastian Wheldon: "It was a pretty difficult weekend. I think as a team we struggled a bit just to find the pace. Prema gave me such a good car, and I can’t thank everyone enough. We got some solid results."