Peerless Antonelli cruises to F4 victory at Zandvoort

Photo: ACI Sport

Andrea Kimi Antonelli dominated the first ADAC Formula 4 race at Zandvoort with a masterly lights-to-flag victory to extend his championship lead to 28 points over Rafael Camara.

The Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 junior was quickly more than two seconds clear of Prema team-mate Camara, and continued to ease away until he was 5.8s to the good at the finish.

The Ferrari junior had a lonely race in second, unable to do anything about Antonelli out front but clear of a race-long battle between Prema team-mates Conrad Laursen and James Wharton.

Laursen got the jump on Wharton at the start but was unable to pull away, as the two ran nose-to-tail for much of the race. Despite a couple of attempted moves into Tarzan by the Australian, Laursen defended resolutely to stay in third.

Behind the Prema quartet, PHM Racing’s pair of Nikita Bedrin and Taylor Barnard were on a charge, having only qualified in eighth and ninth places respectively.

By the time Bedrin passed Van Amersfoort’s Racing Martinius Stenshorne for fifth on lap 10, he was 2.4s behind Wharton, but was soon hauling in the duelling Prema drivers at half a second a lap.

By the end of lap 14 he was onto their tail, with team-mate Barnard following him past Stenshorne with a dramatic late braking manoeuvre into the Tarzan hairpin to take sixth.

Two laps from the finish Bedrin rounded off a great drive by getting ahead of Wharton for fourth.

Prema’s fifth driver Charlie Wurz compounded his mistake in qualifying, which had left him 10th on the grid, by almost stalling at the start, dropping to the back of the field.

Thereafter, however, he charged through the order. He was up to 11th by half-distance, and on the penultimate lap, Stenshorne locked up and ran just wide enough at Tarzan to allow Wurz to nip through on the inside to claim seventh.

Stenshorne finished eighth, having run fifth early on, ahead of Iron Lynx’s Maya Weug who was unable to capitalise on her strong qualifying. Having passed VAR’s Emmo Fittipaldi at the start she fell back to finish in ninth, with Fittipaldi, watched on his famous father Emerson Sr, completing the top 10.

An incident on lap one between VAR’s Brando Badoer and PHM’s Jonas Ried put the latter into the barriers, bringing out an early safety car.

Race result (18 laps)