Formula 4 in Paul Ricard
For the fifth round of the Championship the Italian Formula 4 troupe traveled to the south of France to the circuit Paul Ricard. The last time the series raced there was in 2021.
The typical southern French summer weather provided the drivers track temperatures of more than 44 degrees celsius, which gives them a hard time taking care of their tyres through the fast corners of the circuit.
From FP1 on Friday morning to FP2 in the afternoon all PHM Racing drivers could improve their lap times and close the gap to the front of the field. The Paul Ricard features some challenging flowing corner combinations, where front tyre grip is crucial. Valentin Kluss struggled with understeer from his car more than his teammates. The engineers tried to solve the problem with some setup changes before qualifying on Saturday morning.
James Egozi had an amazing opening lap of the first race. He started in eighth position and already through the first few corners he was fighting hard with his competitors. In the last sector he could overtake another driver and found himself in 5th position after the first lap. Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi and Valentin Kluss had a really great opening lap of the race, with many overtakes as well. They completed six and 4 overtakes respectively, coming closer to the points positions after qualifying just outside of the top 20 positions. Victoria Blokhina finished the race in 25th place, second in the women’s category. James Egozi managed to stay in 5th position for the rest of the 30 minute + 1 lap race. It’s his best finish of the season. Additionally he finished the race as the second best rookie of the race, which grants him his first rookie podium of the 2023 Italian F4 season.
Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi got off to a good start of the second race, making up three positions in the first sector of the circuit. Like in the first race Valentin Kluss started from the 22nd position and pulled off some great overtakes as he charged through the field to score some more points in the championship. In total he overtook 8 competitors in the race, finishing in 14th position. James Egozi fell down to ninth place at the start of the race but fighted back after the Safety Car period, to finish the race again in the points with P7. Right behind him his teammate Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi found himself again in the points, taking home 4 more points.
James Egozi also started the last race of the weekend within the Top 10 positions, but a slow start got him into trouble and he was hit by another with the front wing at his right rear tyre. Unfortunately this gave him a puncture and he had to pit to replace the damaged tyre. After a few laps into the race Valentin Kluss had to retire from the race with an issue of his clutch. Like in the first two races he had a good start once again and points could have been possible, after he and his engineer improved the handling of the car over the weekend. The same issue also appeared on James Egozi’s car, which forced him to retire as well. Victoria Blokhina and Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi could finish the race without any problems. Nandhavud missed the points ever so slightly with P13, just over one second away from P10. Victoria made it a triple appearance on the women’s podium with another second place.
Because of three points finishes for PHM Racing during the weekend they moved up one position in the team standing, up to fourth place now. All in all it was a successful weekend for the team scoring the first rookie podium for James Egozi and a double points finish in the second race. But there were also challenging moments for the drivers and engineers, where there is still some room for improvement. Clutch problems in the third race prevented the PHM Racing crew from scoring further points. We will keep up the positive trend from this weekend for the final two rounds of the championship after the summer break in Mugello at the end of September.
