Drivex’s Nathan Tye takes pole in Spanish F4’s wet Aragon qualifying

Photo: Spanish Winter Championship

Drivex School’s Nathan Tye qualified on pole for the first Spanish Formula 4 Winter Championship race at Motorland Aragon.

Pre-event testing kicked off Friday’s track action, and Campos Racing’s Noah Monteiro set a 1m59.330s to top the timesheet. He had a 0.125-second gap to MP Motorsport’s Kasper Schormans in second place, with Global Racing Service’s Pablo Riccobono a further 0.047s behind.

MP’s Rocco Coronel and Campos’s Vivek Kanthan were split by 0.02s and over 0.25s off Monteiro’s pace, and a second covered the top 19.

Free practice one followed a few hours later, and 12 drivers failed to register laptimes. Jorden Moodley meanwhile was absent due to travel issues, and G4 Racing managed to replace him with Stefano Pedani by FP2. The Australian-Italian is making his single-seater debut this weekend.

Schormans set the FP1 pace, posting a 1m59.064s to lead team-mate Reno Francot by 0.131s. Kanthan was a further 0.1s behind, and 0.04s ahead of Coronel, with Jacob Micallef (Campos) and Monteiro the only others within half a second of Schormans’ benchmark.

Kanthan moved to the top in FP2, a 1m58.729s earning him first place by 0.114s over Francot. Borys Lyzen (MP) and Monteiro also lapped sub-1m59s, and Schormans improved but ended practice in fifth. Campos’s Ty Fisher set a 1m59.058s to be sixth, and the top 17 was split by a second. Six drivers went without laptimes, including Zoe Florescu. She is racing for Tecnicar Motorsport, but her entry is also receiving support from Campos.

Qualifying took place on Saturday morning in wet conditions, meaning laptimes were far slower. Monlau Motorsport’s Miki Blascos set the pace at first, then team-mate Rahim Alibhai who was the first driver into the 2m16s.

He was knocked off top spot 14 minutes into the session by Coronel, who moved ahead by 0.27s.

Monteiro was on provisional pole a minute-and-a-half later, bettering Coronel by 0.035s but also occupying first place for under two minutes as Kanthan then posted a 2m16.195s.

Just two seconds later, Coronel crossed the line and went a massive 0.473s faster than anyone else.

Nobody was able to match that pace initially, and when Tye eventually did with a 2m15.432s there was an immediate response from Coronel who went quickest again by 0.038s.

But Tye also had more pace in hand, and with his final lap set a 2m15.228s to earn pole by 0.166s as Coronel failed to improve.

Campos’s Daniel Kelleher set a personal best on his last effort to snatch third from Monteiro by 0.233s, and Kanthan was 0.762s off pole in fifth despite also making a late improvement.

Lyzen and Monlau’s Fausto Arnaudo were the only other drivers within a second of the pace, while one second then split the next 12 drivers.

Title outsiders Francot, Schormans, Andrej Petrovic and Nacho Tunon (both Tecnicar) qualified ninth, 12th, 14th and 22nd respectively.

Qualifying results