Misano World Circuit - The 2025 Italian F.4 Championship title has been awarded at Misano. Already on the first day of racing came the mathematical confirmation of the success for Prema Racing’s Kean Nakamura-Berta. Eight wins and five podiums mark the season so far for the Japanese-Slovak driver, who sealed the championship.
The title came, in a twist of fate, even before the start, when a technical issue on Gabriel Gomez’s car prevented the US Racing driver from reaching the grid. The Brazilian was set to start from pole position and would have needed victory to keep the title fight alive. At that point, just a single point would have been enough for Nakamura-Berta to secure the championship, but it wasn’t even necessary: with Gomez out of the points, the title was already his.
Despite that, Nakamura-Berta showed strong pace after less-than-ideal qualifying and pushed hard through the field, climbing to third place to celebrate the championship with the Race 2 podium champagne after starting from the third row.
With pole position left empty at the start, Prema Racing’s Sebastian Wheldon had clear track ahead and once again displayed outstanding pace, leading from lights to flag to take his second win of the weekend. After building a margin that at times exceeded four seconds, the American crossed the finish line 3.9 seconds ahead of teammate Newman Chi. The Chinese driver also claimed the Rookie class victory, keeping the battle alive with teammate Salim Hanna (assigned to Group C and therefore not taking part in Race 2).
A brilliant Kirill Kutskov finished fourth. The Maffi Racing driver put on a show in a lively battle with Maksimilian Popov of Van Amersfoort Racing and Andrea Charles Dupé of Prema Racing. In the final stages, among the most thrilling of the top 10 fight, the three went side by side, with Kutskov emerging ahead. Popov and Dupé finished fifth and sixth respectively, after swapping positions several times during the race. The Frenchman was the second-best Rookie of the day.
Seventh place went to Italy’s Emanuele Olivieri (R-ace GP), who finished ahead of Romania’s David Cosma-Cristofor (PHM Racing), third on the Rookie podium.
The fight for the top 10 was intense and action-packed throughout the race, with Kabir Anurag (US Racing) and R-ace GP drivers Andy Consani, Alex Powell, and Oleksandr Savinkov among the protagonists. Savinkov was involved in a collision with Andrija Kostic (US Racing). In the end, the final points went to Poland’s Aleksander Ruta (Van Amersfoort Racing) in ninth and Artem Severiukhin (Jenzer Motorsport) in tenth.
In the Female Trophy, victory went to R-ace GP’s Emily Cotty, ahead of her closest rivals Mathilda Paatz (Mathilda Racing by AS Motorsport) and Californian Payton Westcott (Van Amersfoort Racing).
Kean Nakamura-Berta: “Not the way we wanted to close off the Championship really. We wanted to win it fair and square, with both rivals crossing the finish line. That information just meant that I could push as much as I want. The first lap was chaos, but the pace has been really good today, we’ve always been fast here. Overall, the season has been amazing, almost perfect most of the time. Big thanks to Prema. Within the team, there are probably specific people I would thank: Mark, my engineer, first year working together, he’s been impeccable; half or maybe even more of my success is thanks to him. Dean, my trainer, has been very supportive; my managers, Gary and Harry, for always sorting everything out; my family, my mom, my dad, and my sister, for supporting me from home. In the end, it was a team effort, and I also need to thank my mechanics: Guido, my main mechanic, Max, Stefano, Marco, and everyone who has helped throughout the year. I couldn’t have really done it without them.”
Sebastian Wheldon: “I’m pretty happy with how the race went. Unfortunately for Gomez, he couldn’t start the race from pole, which definitely helped, and I was able to just manage the gap to P2 and come out on top again. The team has done a lot of work — we struggled a lot in the middle of the season, so it feels good to come back strong and finish the season well.”
Newman Chi: “I was just focusing on my tyres and pace. It took a bit long to come in, but when Kean caught me, it actually got a lot better — my pace started to show. We could still work a bit on the balance and improve the car for the next race. We showed strong pace this weekend — if we get the balance right, I think we can take something even more than P2.”