Home Formula 4Italian F4 Tikhon Kharitonov joins Bhaitech in Italian F4 as karters test at Imola

Tikhon Kharitonov joins Bhaitech in Italian F4 as karters test at Imola

by Ida Wood

Russian karter Tikhon Kharitonov will graduate to single-seaters with Bhaitech for the final two rounds of the Italian Formula 4 season after making his test debut at Imola on Thursday.

Thirty cars contested the test, with Cram Motorsport’s Andrea Rosso topping the morning session and his Prema-run title rival Gabriele Mini going fastest in the afternoon.

Mini was joined at Prema by SMP Racing protege Kirill Smal, who raced for the Italian team at Mugello earlier this season, and newly crowned Danish Formula 4 champion Conrad Laursen in addition to his usual team-mates.

One of those, Sebastian Montoya, caused a red flag in the afternoon session with an off at the third corner.

Rosso also had an additional team-mate in Colombian karter Nicolas Baptiste, who has contested two in-season tests already and made his single-seater debut last weekend with Drivex School in Spanish Formula 4.

Baptiste’s countryman Diego Contecha – who’s raced in senior karts this year with Tony Kart – was at Imola making his official F4 test debut with Jenzer Motorsport.

He wasn’t alone in doing so, with Swiss OK-Junior champion Elia Sperandio doing the same. Both have already completed several private tests, with Contecha doing so with Prema and Mucke Motorsport in addition to Jenzer.

French shifter karter Noam Abramczyk made his second in-season test appearance with the BVM Technorace collaboration, and was joined by Italian counterpart Pietro Armanni, another to have completed private running in preparation.

Polish junior karter Kacper Sztuka continued his testing programme with Iron Lynx, while the team’s simulator driver Yaroslav Shevyrtalov finally had the opportunity to try out skills in the real world.

The slowest of the test additions was AKM Motorsport’s Gianluca Giraudi. The 51-year-old is a long-time racer in sportscars with Antonelli Motorsport, which joined forces with Diego Chiesa’s Kart Republic at the start of this year to form AKM. He was a class winner in the European Le Mans Series last year.

Test results
Pos Driver Team Time Gap Laps
1 Gabriele Mini Prema 1m44.483s 78
2 Gabriel Bortoleto Prema 1m44.744s +0.261s 77
3 Andrea Rosso Cram Motorsport 1m44.766s +0.283s 115
4 Sebastian Montoya Prema 1m44.769s +0.286s 88
5 Santiago Ramos Jenzer Motorsport 1m45.098s +0.615s 79
6 Filip Ugran Jenzer Motorsport 1m45.146s +0.663s 98
7 Pietro Delli Guanti BVM Technorace 1m45.163s +0.680s 84
8 Kirill Smal Prema 1m45.198s +0.715s 86
9 Dino Beganovic Prema 1m45.231s +0.748s 81
10 Sebastian Ogaard Bhaitech 1m45.392s +0.909s 91
11 Francesco Simonazzi BVM Technorace 1m45.415s +0.932s 96
12 Francesco Braschi Jenzer Motorsport 1m45.455s +0.972s 89
13 Leonardo Fornaroli Iron Lynx 1m45.726s +1.243s 87
14 Dexter Patterson Bhaitech 1m45.831s +1.348s 89
15 Nicolas Baptiste Cram Motorsport 1m45.904s +1.421s 100
16 Vittorio Catino Cram Motorsport 1m46.139s +1.656s 115
17 Kacper Sztuka Iron Lynx 1m46.262s +1.779s 102
18 Mateusz Kaprzyk Cram Motorsport 1m46.263s +1.780s 93
19 Vlad Lomko US Racing 1m46.274s +1.791s 98
20 Conrad Laursen Prema 1m46.295s +1.812s 78
21 Axel Gnos G4 Racing 1m46.444s +1.961s 99
22 Yaroslav Shevyrtalov Iron Lynx 1m46.485s +2.002s 74
23 Diego Contecha Jenzer Motorsport 1m46.605s +2.122s 103
24 Tikhon Kharitonov Bhaitech 1m46.615s +2.132s 95
25 Taylor Barnard AKM Motorsport 1m46.672s +2.189s 91
27 Sebastian Freymuth AS Motorsport 1m46.771s +2.288s 106
27 Pietro Armanni BVM Technorace 1m47.665s +3.182s 78
28 Elia Sperandio Jenzer Motorsport 1m47.697s +3.214s 85
29 Noam Abramczyk BVM Technorace 1m48.559s +4.076s 99
30 Gianluca Giraudi AKM Motorsport 1m48.975s +4.492s 41