Strauven starts Spanish F4 season with victory at Aragon

Photo: Campos Racing

Campos Racing’s Thomas Strauven started the Spanish Formula 4 championship season with victory in the opening race at a windy Motorland Aragon.

Fresh off the back of his title success in Spanish F4’s winter series, Strauven got a better getaway on the inside of his pole-sitting rookie team-mate Noah Monteiro to take the lead before turn one.

While Rene Lammers got up to third on lap one past his rookie MP Motorsport team-mate Ean Eyckmans, and then took second from Monteiro on lap two, Strauven was able to open up a lead of 2.5 seconds inside the first five laps.

He was almost three seconds clear when the safety car was deployed on lap 10 so that the car of Sacha van ‘t Pad Bosch could be recovered.

With just six minutes and one lap remaining, Strauven got a good gap at the restart, while Lammers had to defend second from Monteiro through the opening corners of the circuit.

In spite of that, Strauven couldn’t pull away as comfortably this time, and his winning margin was 0.821s at the chequered flag. Monteiro rounded out the podium in front of Eyckmans.

Hudson Schwartz and Vivek Kanthan traded fifth place in the early stages, but after the restart Kanthan would slip back behind both Schwartz and Nathan Tye, who had started 11th for Rodin Motorsport.

Juan Cota charged from the back of the grid to eighth after having all of his lap times deleted in qualifying for repeated track limits offences.

Jan Przyrowski, the closest rival to team-mate Strauven in the winter series, started sixth but had to pit early on with front wing damage before making his way back to 17th.

Race results (16 laps)