At the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, the qualifying sessions for the third and final round of the Euro 4 Championship took place. It was a challenging morning with drivers facing a cold track - 12°C track temperature, 11°C air temperature, and humidity at 96%. The qualifying sessions were hard to read, especially with three red flags due to driver incidents involving Enea Frey, Maximilian Popov, and Emanuele Olivieri. The final two red flags came at the end of Qualifying 1 and 2, making things more complicated for those aiming to set their fastest laps toward the session’s conclusion. In the first qualifying, Maxim Rehm secured the pole position. In the second, it was PHM AIX Racing’s Italian driver Davide Larini who took pole, having already delivered a strong performance in the first session. The pole for Race 3, assigned based on the second-best time recorded between the two sessions, went to Alpine Academy driver Kean Nakamura-Berta from Prema Racing.
The German driver from US Racing was among the first to lower his lap time in the first session and ultimately secured the top spot on the Race 1 grid with a time of 1’51.715. Starting from the front row alongside him will be another driver from the German team led by Gerhard Ungar and Ralf Schumacher - the speedy American-Indian Akshay Bohra, who managed to keep the gap close at 0.134 seconds. Australian Jack Beeton rounded out the top three for the team, with a gap of 0.555. Freddie Slater, the British driver from Prema Racing and current leader of the Euro 4 standings, came in fourth with a 0.679-second deficit. Slater, already crowned champion of the Italian F.4 Championship, received a two-position grid penalty for unsafe re-entry after an off-track excursion during Qualifying 2, moving him down to sixth for Race 1. Kean Nakamura-Berta claimed the fifth fastest time with a gap of 0.915, followed by another Australian from US Racing, Gianmarco Pradel, who trailed by 0.948. Davide Larini, who had briefly set the session’s fastest time one minute before the end, finished seventh, with a gap of 1.036. Alex Powell, the Mercedes junior driver from Prema Racing, took eighth with a 1.296-second gap. His teammate from India, Dion Gowda, followed in ninth, trailing Rehm by 1.413. Completing the top ten was Italian driver Emanuele Olivieri, representing AKM Motorsport, with a 1.463-second deficit.
In the second qualifying session, Davide Larini completed his impressive work, improving on his already solid performance from the first session to post the best lap of 1’51.372. Bohra once again lined up on the front row, second with a gap of 0.165 seconds behind the Italian driver. Third place went to Alex Powell, who was 0.212 seconds behind, closely followed by Kean Nakamura-Berta, just one-thousandth of a second off his teammate’s time, with a 0.213-second gap from Larini. British-Spanish driver Edward Robinson of US Racing claimed fifth, with a 0.526-second deficit. Sixth place went to PHM AIX Racing’s Maksimilian Popov, who finished 0.615 seconds behind. Finnish driver Luka Sammalisto from R-ace GP took seventh with a gap of 0.643, ahead of Jenzer Motorsport’s Dutch driver Reno Francot, who was 0.766 behind. Luca Viisoreanu from Real Racing secured a good starting position from ninth on the Race 2 grid, with a gap of 0.772. Freddie Slater rounded out the top ten, 0.845 seconds behind, after being caught out by a final red flag that cut the session short and nullified the planned final laps.
The third pole position went to Kean Nakamura-Berta, thanks to his second-best lap time of 1’51.994. Alex Powell secured second place with a narrow gap of just 0.012 seconds. Another strong start for Davide Larini in Race 3, taking third place with a gap of 0.148. Fourth and fifth places on the grid for the final race went to Luka Sammalisto, trailing by 0.326 seconds, and Luca Viisoreanu, with a 0.464-second deficit. Taiwanese driver Enzo Yeh from R-ace GP will start sixth in Race 3, 0.512 seconds behind, followed by Bohra with a 0.603-second gap. Completing the top ten will be Ethan Ischer from Jenzer Motorsport, with a 0.788-second gap, followed by Gianmarco Pradel at 1.010 and Emanuele Olivieri at 1.045.
Today, Saturday, October 5, will feature the first of three races over the weekend, concluding the Euro 4 Championship 2024. Race 1 will start at 14:50. On Sunday, October 6, Race 2 will take place at 8:40, with the final race of the Euro 4 Championship 2024 starting at 15:40.
The three races over the weekend will each last 30 minutes plus one lap and will be broadcast live on the Euro 4 Championship’s YouTube and Facebook channels, as well as on ACI Sport TV (Sky channel 228, Tivù Sat channel 52, and streaming on www.acisport.it). Additionally, the TV coverage will be extended to an international network, including the DAZN platform, ensuring global visibility for a championship that continues to capture the attention of fans within the motorsport feeder series landscape.
Maxim Rehm: “I’m happy with the first qualifying. The second qualifying was just traffic paradise, to be honest. Sadly, I couldn’t really get a good position, and we couldn’t repeat the pole position. I’m still happy with the first pole position I had this year.”
Davide Larini: “I’m really happy, since the test we were really fast. I have to say that I was expecting this lap. I was to do maybe pole position in the first qualifying, but I had traffic. The start of the season was quite difficult, but every race we were improving and getting better. The car is really good, I have to say thank you to all the team, especially my engineer and my mechanic.”
Kean Nakamura-Berta: “It was a bit of a chaotic qualifying in general, but I managed to make the lap. I was a bit unlucky with the red flag in Q2, probably it could have been a bit better than P4. Overall, pretty happy with the results, P5, P4 and P1. We are in the mix for the win. Thanks for a really good car today. We have done half the job, now it’s time to finish the job, later today and tomorrow.”