Przyrowski win cuts Strauven’s Spanish F4 Winter Championship lead

Photo: Spanish Winter Championship

Jan Przyrowski won the third Spanish Formula 4 Winter Championship race at Algarve to reduce Thomas Strauven’s points lead.

Strauven began the day on top as he set the pace in qualifying, a 1m44.492s lap delivering him pole by a tiny 0.026 seconds.

His Campos Racing team-mates Vivek Kanthan and Przyrowski were within 0.1s of his pace, and Drivex School’s Christopher Feghali was over half a second behind in fourth. A second covered the top 10, and 0.811s split 10th and 30th place.

Kanthan started slowly, and Strauven nailed his launch to be clear of the four-wide fight for second place going into turn one. Kanthan kept the position, then Feghali got ahead before going off prior to the next corner and losing the place.

Przyrowski got past both before the end of lap one, but was already a second behind Strauven. He very gradually reduced that gap throughout the race, before launching an attack on lap 16 of 19 and getting ahead.

He won by half a second, but a five-second penalty for track limits abuse meant Strauven was classified 5.589s behind. That was one of 28 track limits penalties handed out.

Kanthan pressured Feghali for most of the race, getting particularly close again from lap 10 onwards. On lap 12 he tried a diving a move and had a lock-up, and a lap later made a failed attempt around the outside of turn one then snuck past on the inside at turn four.

They were side-by-side again on lap 14, and Feghali reclaimed third on the inside of turn two. Now MP’s Ean Eyckmans was involved, and when Kanthan tried at turn one again he then found MP’s Rene Lammers and Rodin Motorsport’s Nathan Tye in his mirrors too.

Lammers cleared Eyckmans and got alonside Kanthan through lap 16. A three-wide moment began the next lap, and soon Kanthan was back ahead of Feghali.

He pulled away on the last lap, and fourth went to Tye after Lammers got a track limits penalty. MP’s Reno Francot and Eyckmans followed, and Feghali crossed the line in eighth but Lammers instead took the position as he got his own track limits penalty that demoted him to 11th.

Race results (19 laps)