US Racing’s Akshay Bohra fastest in Italian F4 practice at Mugello

Photo: ACI Sport

US Racing’s Akshay Bohra was the fastest driver in Italian Formula 4 practice at Mugello on Friday.

Drivers had two 40-minute sessions, following two days of testing at the track last week, and AKM Motorsport’s Diego de la Torre was the very first to set a lap. His team-mate Tina Hausmann laid down a more repreentative pace, lapping in the 1m49s.

Halfway through FP1 she had been knocked down to 10th place, 0.853 seconds off the pace set by Bohra. Nobody would be able to beat Bohra’s 1m48.056s laptime, in part because with 10 minutes to go there were red flags being waved after PHM Racing’s Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi crashed his car into a gravel trap.

The session resumed with six minutes left on the clock and the team managers of Jenzer Motorsport, PHM Racing and Prema were summoned to race control. There were few impovements in pace by drivers, with Prema’s Tuukka Taponen jumping up to eighth place being the most notable example of a driver lowering their pace.

Bohra ended up on top by 0.037s and 0.119s over team-mates Kacper Sztuka and Zachary David, with James Wharton 0.151s behind in fourth and leading a group of six Prema-run cars. The top 10 was completed by US’s Gianmarco Pradel.

At the start of FP2 it was Bohra who was at the top, then Sztuka, and after a few laps everyone headed to the pits for a prolonged period. The order went unchanged until 15 minutes to go when Jenzer’s Ariel Elkin rose from ninth to first with a 1m49.031s laptime that put him 0.051s ahead of Sztuka.

More drivers left the pits a few minutes later, by which point Elkin had improved to 1m48.931s, and soon there was lots of quick laps being set.

Prema’s Arvid Lindblad went to the top with a 1m48.740s, then team-mate Ugo Ugochukwu set a 1m48.259s. He improved to 1m48.147s, while Lindblad made a gain to 1m48.278s in second place, and Sztuka got into third with a 1m48.301s.

A further improvement from Sztuka brought him up to second place, 0.008s behind Ugochukwu, before the session ended with red flags. Lindblad and David were third and fourth fastest, and Wharton snuck in a late improvement to get into fifth.

Ugochukwu and Lindblad were among the 14 drivers who bettered their FP1 pace, and that put them third and sixth overall in the combined timesheet. The top 22 were covered by 0.982s.

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