Wharton wins at Spa in opening Italian F4 race that is twice red-flagged

Photo: ACI Sport

Prema’s James Wharton led lights-to-flag in a shortened opening Italian Formula 4 race at Spa-Francorchamps.

A great start meant he went unchallenged from pole position on lap one, while Van Amersfoort Racing’s Brando Badoer passed US Racing duo Kacper Sztuka and Zachary David with the power of the two down the Kemmel Straight.

Wharton finished the opening lap 1.15 seconds clear, but his gap had been reduced to 0.682s by the end of lap two. The race was then stopped not long after due to a scary incident involving Airflow Racing’s Guido Luchetti and PHM Racing’s Viktoria Blokhin on the Kemmel Straight. Blokhina’s car rolled several times, and both drivers thankfully emerged unharmed.

After a lengthy delay the race was restarted behind the safety car with a shortened distance from 30 to 25 minutes, and also using the order from the end of lap one. The race distance was shortened even more to 23m20s (plus one lap) before the restart actually occurred, and the safety car ended up leading the field for three laps rather than one.

Wharton made the most of the rolloing start to put himself out of trouble again, while David was under attack after providing a tow to the cars behind.

Although the group near the front ran very closely together, most of the overtaking was actually happening far further down the field. Outside of the points, BVM Racing’s Alfio Spina made a great move on lap six of the restarted encounter around the outside of PHM Racing’s Valentin Kluss at Bruxelles but ended up cutting across him as he went to the racing line for the next corner and ended up breaking off Kluss’s front wing.

Prema’s Ugo Ugochukwu passed Badoer for third on the outside just before Les Combes on lap seven, but then the move ended up being for nothing as the race was red-flagged and the final classification was taken from two laps prior.

The cause of the second stoppage was an incident that put both Davide Larini (AKM Motorsport) and Ruiqi Liu (US Racing) into the barriers after turn 11.

The reversal of Ugochukwu’s move on Badoer was the only change to the top 10 positions, while Kluss was classified 11th despite having retired before the red flags were out.

Race result (5 laps)