Photo: Gavin Baker Photography
Formula Regional Americas and United States Formula 4 returned to action with pre-event testing at Virginia International Raceway on Thursday, with their 2024 calendars being announced earlier in the week.
US F4 will be switching to a halo-shod second-generation F4 chassis from Ligier for next year, while the sister Formula Development series currently aimed at 14 year olds (but open to older drivers in the future) will not only continue to use the first-generation Ligier JS F4 but also rebrand to be named after the car.
All three series begin their seasons at NOLA Motorsports Park on April 11-14, then race at Road America on May 16-19.
FRegional Americas heads to Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the first ever time, with it not specified if the oval or road layout will be used, on June 13-16 and a week later the three series reconvene at Mid-Ohio.
A month later they also all race at New Jersey Motorsports Park on July 25-28, then FRegional and F4 head to former Canadian Grand Prix venue Mosport on August 29-September 1. It will surprisingly be US F4’s second visit to the track, having raced there in 2017, while the continental FRegional Americas series is yet to actually race outside of the USA.
Virginia loses it spot on the calendar in those two series for 2024, but will host the Ligier JS F4 Series finale on October 3-6, while the FRegional Americas and US F4 campaigns conclude at Circuit of the Americas on October 31-November 3.
They had four sessions each of testing at Virginia on Thursday, and Crosslink/Kiwi Motorsport’s Ryan Shehan set the pace in FRegional with a 1m45.832s lap from session three. Next best was team-mate Callum Hedge, whose session four-topping laptime was 0.595 seconds off Shehan’s earlier benchmark.
Cooper Becklin made it a Crosslink/Kiwi 1-2-3, 1.147s off the pace. He topped the first two sessions but set his fastest lap in session four. IGY6 Motorsports’ Hayden Bowlsbey was 1.555s slower than Shehan in fourth, Jensen Global Advisors’ Oliver Westling was 2.047s back in fifth. In total nine cars participated in the test.
Gonella Racing’s Tyke Durst topped the first US F4 session with a 1m59.855s lap, putting him 0.749s clear of Crosslink/Kiwi’s Titus Sherlock in second place.
Doran Motorsports Group’s Alex Berg lowered the pace to 1m57.575s in session two, with Jay Howard Driver Development’s Michael Costello second fastest and 0.543s slower than Berg.
The track got even faster in session three, at least for Ryan Yardley who set a 1m55.363s lap. Costello was again second fastest, but 3.246s off the pace. Yardley was also fastest in session four.