After a clean getaway, Mauricio Baiz opened up a gap to his challengers, winning the Italian F4 Championship‘s B-C Qualifying race, allowing him to collect the first 25 points of the weekend. The result will also help his grid position for the final tomorrow.
A slight delay to proceedings saw the pressure grow around the Adria circuit ahead of the first race of the weekend. The start was pushed back further as Marino Sato and Sebastian Fernandez stalled on the grid. The field was sent round for another formation lap as Sato was pushed into the pits.
Despite starting fifth, Diego Ciantini found himself pushed back in the opening lap as polesitter Baiz maintained his lead from rookie driver Simone Cunati.
Meanwhile a rocketing start from Yan Leon Shlom saw him gain five positions off the line, finishing the first lap in fourth. He was unable to keep up with the front three though, with third place Joao Viera 3.5 seconds up the road as the drivers entered their fifth lap.
Viera wasn’t content with maintaining third though, closing the gap to Cunati and allowing Baiz to open up some breathing space to his rivals. This proved to be only temporary though as the challengers refused to leave him alone.
Behind, one driver who was determined to benefit from the struggling Shlom was Guiliano Raucci. After leaving Richard Verschoor behind the Brazilian was on a charge as he closed to within a second of fifth place Marcos Siebert.
While he was able to make the start, Fernandez’s race went from bad to worse as he was forced to pit with damage as he was making his way up the order from the back. Fellow luckless racer Ciantini found himself under investigation before the end, already way out of the points.
With three minutes remaining on the clock, Viera finally found a way past Cunati, but with a four second gap to the all dominant Baiz up front, a win looked beyond question.
This left Baiz to cruise around the last lap, taking victory by 3.765 seconds as Viera and Cunati rounded out the podium. Shlom would hold on to fourth ahead of Siebert as a late race move from Verschoor saw him pick up sixth ahead of Raucci and Feder Malvestiti.
