Home Formula 4ADAC F4 Bearman fastest in practice sessions for ADAC F4’s Red Bull Ring round

Bearman fastest in practice sessions for ADAC F4’s Red Bull Ring round

by Ida Wood

Photo: ADAC

Van Amersfoort Racing’s Ollie Bearman was fastest in both free practice sessions at the Red Bull Ring for the ADAC Formula 4 season opener.

The Briton comfortably topped the morning session by 0.622 seconds over a 91-second lap, with the next four drivers behind him split by less than a tenth of a second and the top 10 all within Bearman’s benchmark pace.

Iron Lynx’s Leonardo Fornaroli was the initial pacesetter, but he got shuffled down the order as the session went on before a late flyer took him back up to second place.

That shifed BWR Motorsports’ Taylor Barnard to third, with the Briton being the first driver of the day to lap sub-1m33s and was also the only one holding a candle to Bearman’s pace after until with 12 minutes to go the VAR driver set a 1m31.178s lap that nobody could get near.

Prema’s Kirill Smal and US Racing’s Luke Browning were marginally slower than Barnard in fourth and fifth.

The early afternoon session was faster for most drivers, but Bearman didn’t improve and his margin at the top got cut down to 0.208s by Browning.

Again it was Fornaroli who set the early pace, and he was on top with 10 minutes to go when an incident involving Jenzer Motorsport’s Samir Ben brought out red flags. Action resumed with enough time for each driver to set three laps, and Bearman improved with each of his to go fastest but 0.036s slower than his morning lap.

Prema’s Sebastian Montoya left it late to jump from 10th to third, 0.007s off Browning in second, while Fornaroli failed to improve after the red flag and ended up in fourth ahead of Browning’s team-mate Tim Tramnitz.

VAR trio Joshua Dufek, Nikita Bedrin and Bence Valint were the next quickest after that, while Barnard and team-mate Valentinto Catalano didn’t better their morning pace and ended up ninth and 17th respectively.

Smal and VAR’s Cenyu Han, who had both impressed in the morning, suffered the same and they were shuffled down to 11th and 13th overall in a top 16 spread by under a second.

Free practice results

Pos Driver Team Time Gap Laps
1 Ollie Bearman Van Amersfoort Racing 1m31.178s 28
2 Luke Browning US Racing 1m31.386s +0.208s 29
3 Sebastian Montoya Prema 1m31.393s +0.215s 29
4 Leonardo Fornaroli Iron Lynx 1m31.552s +0.374s 32
5 Tim Tramnitz US Racing 1m31.579s +0.401s 28
6 Joshua Dufek Van Amersfoort Racing 1m31.643s +0.465s 29
7 Nikita Bedrin Van Amersfoort Racing 1m31.772s +0.594s 28
8 Bence Valint Van Amersfoort Racing 1m31.780s +0.602s 28
9 Taylor Barnard BWR Motorsports 1m31.833s +0.655s 30
10 Sami Meguetounif R-ace GP 1m31.844s +0.666s 26
11 Kirill Smal Prema 1m31.863s +0.683s 29
12 Victor Bernier R-ace GP 1m31.985s +0.807s 27
13 Cenyu Han Van Amersfoort Racing 1m31.990s +0.812s 27
14 Vlad Lomko US Racing 1m32.096s +0.918s 29
15 Francesco Braschi Jenzer Motorsport 1m32.135s +0.957s 30
16 Conrad Laursen Prema 1m32.168s +0.990s 27
17 Valentino Catalano BWR Motorsports 1m32.379s +1.201s 28
18 Hamda Al Qubaisi Prema 1m32.461s +1.283s 28
19 Marcus Amand R-ace GP 1m32.618s +1.440s 25
20 Maya Weug Iron Lynx 1m32.675s +1.497s 32
21 Samir Ben Jenzer Motorsport 1m33.114s +1.936s 30
22 Pietro Armanni Iron Lynx 1m33.183s +2.005s 32
23 Jorge Garciarce Jenzer Motorsport 1m33.464s +2.286s 31
24 Michael Sauter Sauter Engineering+Design 1m33.541s +2.363s 32