Sammalisto controls second Italian F4 race at Misano for maiden victory

Photo: ACI Sport

US Racing’s Luka Sammalisto controlled Italian Formula 4’s second race of the weekend at Misano to take a lights-to-flag victory, his first in single-seaters.

Returning to F4 for a third season after a planned move to Formula Regional with Trident fell through, the Finn had dominated Friday qualifying, his best time beating his nearest rival Alp Aksoy by 0.145 seconds.

Race two brought together Groups A and B, meaning that Sammalisto and Aksoy lined up on the front row. Sammalisto made a perfect start although Aksoy made a much-improved getaway compared to race one. However, the Prema man ran wide at Turn 2, dropping to fourth behind his team-mate David Cosma Cristofor and US Racing’s Edu Robinson.

Prema’s Sasha Bondarev was another to lose out in the first lap kerfuffle, dropping to seventh behind US Racing’s Ludovico Busso and the Maffi Racing car of the impressive David Walther.

An incident between Georgiy Zasov and Fabricio Fogaca at Turn 14 brought out the safety car, as it turned out unnecessarily, as Fogaca got moving just after it had been deployed.

Aksoy took advantage of the restart to pick off Robinson, while Bondarev moved up to sixth as Busso dropped behind another US Racing, that of Arjen Kraeling. Bondarev moved back to fifth ahead of Walther next time around but would progress no further. If anything, the Williams junior appeared to be holding up the following group allowing the top four to break clear.

Try as he might, Cosma Cristofor could do nothing about Sammalisto out front, the Finn maintaining a comfortable gap of around a second throughout the race.

Aksoy and Robinson were also lapping in step, as the gaps between the first four stayed constant throughout.

Walther took seventh, the only interloper in the top eight among the Prema and US Racing entries. Van Amersfoort Racing’s Thomas Bearman was unable to make the same progress as in race one but still managed to fight through to ninth at the flag.

Aksoy gained the compensation of inheriting victory in the first race of the weekend, after on-track race winner Niccolo Maccagnani was handed a 10-second penalty after the race for starting his engine on the grid before the one-minute board had been displayed. Consequently, Maccagnani drops to fourth in the final results for race one. Bondarev moves up to second, with US Racing’s Ary Bansal claiming the final podium place.

Race results (16 laps)