Monza - Race 3 at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza marked the end of the third round of the Italian F.4 Championship, the single-seater series promoted by ACI Sport and WSK Promotion. Spectacle wasn’t lacking throughout the weekend, already lively on Saturday, when three different drivers took turns on the podium: Prema Racing’s Sebastian Wheldon claimed victory in Race 1 and finished third in Race 2, US Racing’s Gabriel Gomez secured second place in both races, while Kean Nakamura-Berta, third in Race 1, took the win in Race 2.
On Sunday, new names stepped into the spotlight at the Monza ACI Racing Weekend. Prema Racing’s lightning-fast Chinese Rookie Newman Chi, who had been handed penalties in both Saturday races, took a brilliant win with a decisive move. Chi executed a perfect double pass at the entrance to the first chicane and moved into the lead. Behind him, the battle raged on between Kean Nakamura-Berta and Sebastian Wheldon, with Prema Racing locking out the top three positions. In the final stages, however, Chi had to manage his first-ever restart from the lead behind the safety car, a task he completed with composure. In the first chicane, Nakamura-Berta and Wheldon collided, both dropping out of the points. Wheldon was handed a 10-second time penalty after the race for the incident.
Second on the final Monza podium was Luka Sammalisto. The Finnish driver of US Racing capped off a strong and steadily improving weekend, after finishing fifth in Race 1 and fourth in Race 2. Third across the line was Salim Hanna. However, the Colombian driver of Prema Racing was handed a 25-second penalty for a collision that sent Van Amersfoort Racing’s Dante Vinci into the barriers.
The third step of the podium was thus inherited by Jenzer Motorsport’s British driver Bart Harrison. Starting from the eighth row, Harrison drove an excellent race, a well-earned reward after a challenging weekend that had compromised his Saturday performances.
Luca Viisoreanu finished fourth, securing his best result of the season so far and scoring valuable points for the Romanian team Real Racing. In fifth was R-ace GP’s Italian driver Emanuele Olivieri, whose weekend was marked by ups and downs that didn’t quite reflect the pace he showed on track. He was followed by two Jenzer Motorsport drivers: Artem Severiukhin, also the second-best Rookie of the race after Chi, and Swiss racer Enea Frey. Eighth place went to US Racing’s Serbian driver Andrija Kostic. Next to cross the line was R-ace GP’s Mercedes junior Alex Powell, who however, lost a position due to a five-second time penalty imposed by the Stewards for contact that caused a puncture on Jenzer Motorsport’s Teo Schropp. Completing the top 10 and collecting the final available points were PHM Racing’s Romanian driver David Cosma-Cristofor, who stood on the third step of the Rookie podium in all three races this weekend, and Jenzer Motorsport’s Mexican rookie Javier Herrera, making his first appearance in the Italian F.4 Championship.
In the female drivers’ classification, the win went to R-ace GP’s Emily Cotty, ahead of Van Amersfoort Racing’s Payton Westcott, a two-time winner earlier in the weekend, and Maffi Racing’s Kornelia Olkucka.
The final race of the weekend proved particularly complex, with multiple safety car interventions due to a series of incidents. On the opening lap, R-ace GP’s Oleksandr Savinkov, PHM Racing’s Andrea Charles Dupe and Cram Motorsport’s Elia Weiss all retired. Shortly after, Gabriel Gomez of US Racing, one of the key figures of the weekend, was forced to rally into the gravel while battling for a top-10 spot. Also retiring were Prema Racing’s Oleksandr Bondarev, who endured his most unlucky weekend so far, and US Racing’s Alpine Academy driver Kabir Anurag.
Newman Chi: “It was pretty tough when I got the message about the penalties in the first two races. But I kept my head down and focused on the last race, because I knew we had the pace, and we proved it. Obviously, I had never done a restart from the lead behind the safety car, that was the first time. I tried to learn from my teammates, who usually do most of the starts. During the whole safety car period, I was thinking about how to manage it, and in the end, it went pretty well. I probably wasn’t even looking down the straight, I was completely focused on my mirrors!”
Luka Sammalisto: “Qualifying this weekend went really well for me. In Race 1, I finished fifth, and in Race 2, I finished fourth. I started third in the last race and gave everything I had, managing to finish second on the podium. I’m really happy with the whole weekend. A huge thank you to the team, my engineer, and the mechanics, they’re doing an amazing job. I’m feeling very confident going into Mugello as well.”
After three rounds, Kean Nakamura-Berta still leads the championship standings with a total of 165 points. Sebastian Wheldon is second on 136, followed by Gabriel Gomez on 114.
The next round of the Italian F.4 Championship will take place at Mugello, from 11 to 13 July. Later in the same month, the parallel Formula 4 series promoted by ACI Sport and WSK Promotion, the E4 Championship, will also begin, with the first of its three rounds scheduled at Circuit Paul Ricard in Le Castellet, from 18 to 20 July.