Ho completes qualifying lockout with pole for 2023 Spanish F4 finale

Photo: F4 Spain

Christian Ho topped qualifying for the final race of the Spanish Formula 4 season to take his seventh pole of 2023.

The Campos Racing driver had already taken pole for the first two races of the weekend by going fastest in Saturday’s qualifying session, and on Sunday morning he became the only driver this year to take pole for all three races of a weekend.

Sainteloc Racing’s newly crowned champion Theophile Nael comfortably set the pace through the first half of Q2, and with eight minutes to go was fastest by 1.1 seconds over Campos’s Enzo Deligny. Theodor Jensen (Sainteloc) and Ricardo Gracia (Monlau Motorsport) were a further third of a second behind while Ho was down in 29th and 15.5s off the pace.

But just a minute-and-a-half later Nael found himself in 13th place and 1.4s off the provisional pole time himself, as Deligny went fastest with a 1m42.295s to lead MP Motorsport’s Valerio Rinicella by 0.011s. Ho meanwhile slumped even lower to 31st place.

His next lap brought him up to 11th, 1.042s off the pace of Deligny, while Nael sank to 16th.

Normal order seemed to resume with three-and-a-half minutes to go as Deligny improved to 1m41.539s at the top but Nael jumped up to second place – 0.268s behind – and Ho rose to fifth. Another improvement put him ahead of Nael, and he was just 0.009s off matching Deligny.

There was still time for two more laps, and Ho’s next effort put him on pole by 0.034s as Deligny and Nael failed to better their pace. Nael did get faster on his final lap, but the laptimes then deleted by the stewards and it did not impact his third place on the grid.

Qualifying results