Freddie Slater crowned Italian F4 champion at Barcelona with 13th win

Photo: ACI Sport

Freddie Slater became the 2024 Italian Formula 4 champion with victory in a disrupted race two at Barcelona.

The Prema driver’s 13th victory of 2024 was another lights-to-flag success, and his life was made easier at the start when fellow front-row man Jack Beeton stalled. Further back Enea Frey and Enzo Yeh did the same, resulting in chaos.

While the US Racing-run car of Beeton was avoided by the field, PHM Racing’s Everett Stack broke his front-left wheel when driving past Jenzer Motorsport’s Frey and he then career sideways across the track into R-ace GP’s Yeh. Maffi Racing’s Nathanael Berreby had been going for the gap to the side of Yeh but ended up having to lock the brakes as Stack came across.

Maffi took off Yeh’s rear wing and broke his front suspension on both sides as he crashed into both cars, and the safety car was summoned.

Racing did not resume until lap six, after several trips through the pitlane for the field as the crashed cars were recovered, and Slater led Van Amersfoort Racing’s Hiyu Yamakoshi, US’s Akshay Bohra, Prema’s Kean Nakamura Berta and US’s Gianmarco Pradel.

Slater nailed the restart and got himself out of reach of Yamakoshi pretty quickly, while a battle raged for sixth. US’s Maxim Rehm passed VAR’s Gustav Jonsson down the pit straight for the position, then Jonsson got back ahead at turn five. Prema’s Alex Powell then attacked Rehm, and cleared him at turn one on the next lap.

Next to fill Rehm’s mirrors were Prema duo Rashid Al Dhaheri and Tomass Stolcermanis, who he held at bay as PHM’s Maximilian Popov also got involved. That battle settled down for a while, and up front Slater had his lead slowly reduced by Yamakoshi from 0.9 to 0.6 seconds.

Rehm lost two spots on lap 12, and Popov attacked him briefly on lap 13 before he then had to get defensive against AKM Motorsport’s Emanuele Olivieri for half a lap. He slipstreamed past Rehm on lap 14, and Olivieri later also got through.

On that same lap the gap between the top two came down to half a second, but Yamakoshi was not focusing on denying Slater victory since he now had Bohra right behind. That enabled Slater to pull away again on the last lap, crossing the line 0.982s ahead to become champion.

Race results (15 laps)