Slater makes late pass on Beeton for eighth Italian F4 win of 2024

Photo: ACI Sport

Prema’s Freddie Slater took his eighth Italian Formula 4 win of the season in race one at Mugello.

Jack Beeton immediately got alongside US Racing team-mate and poleman Akshay Bohra at the start, and took the lead going into turn one. Slater was on the outside of the pair and briefly tried to make it three-wide through the corner, and kept alongside Bohra through turns two and three before finally getting the move done for second place.

There was a gap of 0.8 seconds between the top two at the end of lap one, with Van Amersfoort Racing’s Hiyu Yamakoshi holding fourth place while Rashid Al Dhaheri passed Prema team-mate Kean Nakamura Berta for fifth.

Prema’s Alex Powell and Tomass Stolcermanis held sixth and seventh, and Jenzer Motorsport’s Reno Francot passed Real Racing Team’s Luca Viisoreanu for ninth.

The top 10 ran in formation thereon, with gaps of around 0.7s between each of them, while Jenzer’s Enea Frey gradually dropped down the order having started lap two in 12th place.

He was passed by VAR’s Gustav Jonsson on that lap, lost out to US Racing’s Maxim Rehm on lap four, and his team-mates Gianmarco Pradel and Matheus Ferreira on laps five and six.

Jonsson took 11th from Prema’s Dion Gowda on lap seven, then on lap eight the safety car was summoned after AS Motorsport’s Wiktor Dobrzanski spun around Cram Motorsport’s Filippo Fiorentino at turn one. Dobrzanski lost his front wing and then spun into the gravel, where his car had to be retreived, while Fiorentino slowly made it back to the pits with a punctured rear-right tyre to retire.

Racing resumed on lap 11 with a choatic restart. Beeton left it as late as possible to return to racing speed, appearing to slow down slightly halfway along the pit straight too which led to collisions and illegal overtakes behind him. Al Dhaheri was one of the drivers impacted the most negatively, as he fell to 25th place as the restart lap began.

Slater tried taking the lead from Bohra down the inside of turn three but could not make the move stick, while Powell passed Nakamura for fifth. Frey retired at the end of the lap with a broken front wing, having taken a trip through the gravel.

The chaotic restart brought Jonsson up to ninth place, and he passed Francot at turn three on lap 12. Once again the field settled down into an order, with the attempted overtakes mostly coming from drivers trying to take 11th from Gowda.

On lap 15 of 16 several drivers were finally successful in getting past him, with Gowda dropping to 15th, but more significantly there was a change for the lead as Slater tucked into Beeton’s slipstream then drew alongside turn two and kept it planted on the outside to move ahead. He pulled away once in the lead, winning by 1.711s.

Viisoreanu lost 10th on the final lap to Ferreira, who along with Rehm, Jenzer’s Ethan Ischer and Pradel had passed Gowda.

Further back there was a race-ending crash on the pit straight between R-ace GP’s Enzo Yeh and AKM Motorsport’s Alexander Savinkov.

Race results (16 laps)