Photo: KSP Reportages
Alexandre Munoz and Arthur Dorison again won the first two French Formula 4 races of the weekend at Dijon.
Race two was brought forward to Saturday, meaning any major incidents in race one risked the possibility of drivers missing the action later in the day. And it proved to be a dramatic race.
Munoz started on pole and held off Jules Roussel, who passed Montego Maassen on the opening lap. Rafael Perard, starting seventh due to a three-place grid penalty carried over from round one, made his way up to fourth ahead of Louis Iglesias and Malo Bolliet.
Guillaume Bouzar meanwhile fell from fifth to ninth, but regained a place on lap two by passing Hugo Herrouin and another on lap three as Dorison headed towards retirement.
Munoz was the fastest driver on track and had a 1.5-second lead when the safety car appeared on lap five due to Leandre Carvalho and Angelina Proenca getting into trouble at turn four. Niccolo Pirri and Zhelin Shen were also involved, and plummeted down the order.
Racing resumed on lap nine, and Bouzar overtook Bolliet for sixth. Behind him, Rayan Caretti cleared Rintaro Sato for ninth. He then snuck past Herrouin and Romeo Leurs on lap 10 before the safety car returned due to Sofia Zanfari crashing out at turn one.
The next restart came on lap 13 of 18, and Munoz sprinted away up front. While the top five held their positions, Herrouin headed to the pits to retire and Caretti overtook Bouzar for sixth then pulled away from him.
Nicolas Pasquier crashed at turn seven on lap 15, but only local yellow flags were needed as his car was cleared.
Sato started race two from reversed-grid pole but fell to sixth with a slow getaway, with fellow front-row starter Dorison taking the lead. He was followed by Bolliet, who started fourth, and Iglesias, who came from sixth on the grid.
Four laps in, Perard was challenging Iglesias for third but lost out in battle and fell to 11th just as the safety car was deployed to retrieve the cars of Leandre Carvalho, Angelina Proenca and Shen Zhelin from the gravel trap.
Pablo Riccobonno Bello picked up race-ending damage as the field concertinaed before the race restarted with 15 minutes left on the clock.
In that time, Dorison managed to pull out a 3.594-second advantage over Bolliet as he clinched his second successive reversed-grid win.
Munoz almost made it to the podium after starting 10th. He went side-by-side with Sato to take fourth with seven minutes to go, and tried to repeat the move on Iglesias at the end of the race but couldn’t find a way past.
Results round-up
Race 1 (18 laps)
1 Alexandre Munoz 30m27.980s
2 Jules Roussel +1.666s
3 Montego Maassen +2.157s
4 Rafael Perard +2.627s
5 Louis Iglesias +3.940s
6 Rayan Caretti +4.703s
7 Guillaume Bouzar +6.522s
8 Malo Bolliet +6.969s
9 Romeo Leurs +7.221s
10 Rintaro Sato +9.014s
Fastest lap: Munoz, 1m16.658s
Race 2 (20 laps)
1 Arthur Dorison 30m50.708s
2 Bolliet +3.594s
3 Iglesias +5.388s
4 Munoz +5.502s
5 Sato +6.206s
6 Bouzar +6.400s
7 Caretti +6.709s
8 Hugo Herrouin +7.427s
9 Maassen +8.509s
10 Perard +10.808s
FL: Munoz, 1m16.830s
Championship standings
1 Munoz 97 2 Roussel 58 3 Dorison 42 4 Iglesias 39 5 Perard 36 6 Bolliet 29 7 Bouzar 22 8 Caretti 20 9 Matteo Giaccardi 18 10 Andy Consani 16