Home Formula 4French F4 French F4 season gets underway with Barter fastest in Nogaro practice

French F4 season gets underway with Barter fastest in Nogaro practice

by Ida Wood

Photo: Hugh Barter

The 2021 French Formula 4 season officially got underway at Nogaro with a single Saturday morning practice session topped by Australian Hugh Barter.

Richard Mille Young Talent Academy shootout winner Barter set the pace pretty much throughout, initially lapping in the 1m29s before steadily improving through the first 15 minutes of the half-hour of track time.

The order was mostly set by the mid-point of the session, with Barter having set a 1m27.958s lap that put him just 0.008 seconds ahead of 2020 guest driver Esteban Masson.

Third fastest was series returnee Owen Tangavelou, just ahead of Dario Cabanelas and pre-event test pacesetter Maceo Capietto.

Aiden Neate, Gael Julien and Daniel Ligier also all got within a second of the pace, and 3.815s covered the entirety of the 16-car field.

Pierre-Alexandre Provost was in second place early on, but the gains he made were smaller than those around him and he hadn’t broken into the 1m28s by the time the session ended and he was down to 10th place.

Qualifying takes place on Saturday afternoon, with the first two French F4 races of the year running on Sunday and then the third race of the extended Easter weekend taking place on Monday.

Free practice results

Pos Driver Time Laps
1 Hugh Barter 1m27.958s 20
2 Esteban Masson +0.008s 18
3 Owen Tangavelou +0.401s 19
4 Dario Cabanelas +0.429s 19
5 Maceo Capietto +0.439s 19
6 Aiden Neate +0.730s 19
7 Gael Julien +0.827s 18
8 Daniel Ligier +0.831s 18
9 Noah Andy +1.033s 19
10 Pierre-Alexandre Provost +1.063s 14
11 Alessandro Giusti +1.477s 18
12 Sutumno Thanapongpan +1.718s 18
13 Enzo Geraci +1.785s 19
14 Adam Szydlowski +3.170s 19
15 Angelina Favario +3.476s 19
16 Vignesh Kadarabad +3.815s 18