Gonella Racing‘s Mac Clark swept the Sunday races while Velocity Racing Development‘s Nico Christodoulou finished the weekend with a win on Monday as the F4 U.S. Championship took on the always challenging Road America.
Clark took the pole for the first race of the weekend, beating out Jason Alder by 0.019 sec. Unfortunately for Clark, the race did not have a full lap under green and thus it did not count for points and will be made up later in the season. Right from the drop of the green flag, there was a full course yellow called for an incident in turn six collecting Louka St-Jean, Jake Bonilla and Nick Persing. When the race finally went green again, another full course yellow was displayed for a crash in turn twelve involving leaders Alder, Arias Deukmedjian and Bijoy Garg.
With only six minutes remaining in the race, Clark took the win under yellow with Jay Howard Driver Development‘s Matt Christensen taking second and Christodoulou third.
Due to the race finishing with no green flag laps, race two was gridded based on Saturday’s qualifying which gave Clark another front row starting spot. Early in the session with twenty-two minutes remaining, a major wreck in the “kink” (turn eleven) brought out a full course yellow. Involved in the wreck were Alder, Chole Chambers, Louka St-Jean and Oscar Haffar. A red flag was called to help expedite the track cleaning process.
The race then went green to the finish, with Clark taking another victory. Noel Leon of DEForce Racing took second place, and Christensen finished third. Garg recovered from the wreck in race one to finish fourth, while Christodoulou rounded out the top five. After being involved in early incidents, Bonilla, Persing and Deukmedjian did not start race two.
Race three saw Garg start on the pole and lead the field to green. On lap three however, Garg spun in turn five sending him to the back of the pack and handing the lead to Christodoulou. By the midpoint of the race, both Emily Linscott, who will be chronicling her time in F4 here at The Checkered Flag, and Seth Foley retired. Linscott brushed the wall in turn ten and Foley spun in turn four.
Christodoulou built a sizeable gap for the rest of the race, pulling away from Clark in second to take the win. Clark was eventually swallowed up by Christensen who took second, as he finished third. After not competing in the second race, Deukmedjian came home in fourth place, and Lucas Mann of Momentum Motorsports took his first top five of the year. Bonilla and Persing also did not start this race.
Despite the crash on Monday, Linscott made the most of a twenty-second place starting spot in both races on Sunday, finishing nineteenth in race one and sixteenth in race two in her Kiwi Motorsports machine.
The next event will take place at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course on 25-27 June.
