Sztuka fastest in practice for second Euro 4 round at Monza

Photo: ACI Sport

Round two of the new Euro 4 series for Formula 4 cars is underway, and it was US Racing’s Kacper Sztuka who set the pace in free practice at Monza.

The 30-car field got two sessions lasting 40 minutes each, with the first taking place in the morning on a rain-soaked track.

New Red Bull junior Enzo Deligny, a late addition to the grid with AKM Motorsport, laid down the first benchmark: a 2m13.785s.

BVM Racing’s Alfio Spina beat it with a 2m11.722s, then US Racing’s Gianmarco Pradel set a 2m11.094s.

After 10 minutes his team-mate Akshay Bohra had lapped in the 2m09s but was only briefly on top before Prema’s James Wharton set a 2m09.717s to lead him by 0.057 seconds.

Deligny returned to first place by going almost a second faster, and two laps later Wharton then knocked another quarter of a second off the pace. US Racing’s Zachary David got the closest to his 2m08.294s benchmark, lapping 0.096s lower, before Wharton improved again to 2m07.496s with 10 minutes remaining.

Pradel and then Prema’s Tuukka Taponen held second place, before the order got shaken up with four minutes to go as a flurry of improvements came in.

Prema duo Ugo Ugochukwu and Arvid Lindblad both outpaced Wharton, while Taponen was shuffled down to eighth place. But he was improving and he then went joint fastest with Ugochukwu as both set 2m07.097s. Taponen took first place on dint of crossing the line to set his time a second before Ugochukwu did, then the session was ended early by red flags.

Monza was dry by the time FP2 began in the afternoon, so laptimes were considerably faster.

Sztuka and Prema’s debuting Freddie Slater disputed first place early on as they lapped in the 1m53s, then red flags were out. Nobody improved their pace following the restart before the session was stopped again, meaning most of the track activity came in the final eight minutes.

Van Amersfoort Racing’s Brando Badoer got within 0.027s of Sztuka’s long-standing 1m53.257s benchmark, which Slater surpassed by 0.075s with six minutes to go.

A minute later he was down to fifth as Wharton lowered the pace to 1m52.659s, with Badoer just 0.079s slower than him, and he improved again to 1m52.470s.

Sztuka was 0.092s off the top in second place until the chequered flag, when he went fastest by 0.053s. A similarly late improvement put Taponen third ahead of Lindblad and Slater.

Free practice results