It was a shortened and dramatic ADAC Formula 4 race, when Round 13 was held at the Nürburgring.
Lirim Zendeli was the quickest in the qualifying, ahead of the second placed guy in the Championship, Felipe Drugovich. Jonathan Aberdein was third fastest, while Kim Luis Schramm started fourth. Andreas Estner delivered a surprise with fifth fastest time, right ahead of Championship leader Juri Vips.
Markus Armstrong had a terrible qualifying and only managed 13th fastest lap. So there was a potential to lose connection with top 2 in the Championship, but a lot could happen during the 30 minutes of racing.
Zendeli was quick to cut in front of Drugovich when the lights went out. There was a drama after only three corners, when Drugovich was spun around by Aberdein. That sent Drugovich all the way to last position, before he got the car pointing in the right direction again. Aberdein got a drive-through penalty for the collision.
At the start of the second lap, all hell broke lose. Kami Laliberte had to park his car with a puncture, while at the same time Charles Weerts lost his front wing in turn 1. If those two things had anything to do with each other, it wasn’t shown on the tv. Shortly after there was a more dramatic scene, when Nicklas Nielsen’s car ended upside down. Race control decided to throw the Red Flag for the doctors to get to him and get him extracted from the car. The news directly after the race was that he was fine, and it was only a precaution to be gentle on the extracting.
Before the Red Flag we had seen Frederik Vesti go all the way from starting position 16 to 8th position in the race, which was an impressive start in just three laps for the young Dane.
Photo: Gruppe C Photography
After a 20 minutes break, there was a Safety Car restart, with just 20 minutes left on the clock. After two laps behind the Safety Car, the field was released again with about 15 minutes of race time left.
Lirim Zendeli was initially under hard pressure from Kim Luis Schramm while Andreas Estner was third, before he was overtaken by Fabio Scherer. Felipe Drugovich was busy trying to battle his way through the field, but the time was against him, and with 10 minutes left of the race, he was only in 20th position.
Photo: Gruppe C Photography
Frederik Vesti made it past Enzo Fittipaldi in the battle for 7th, while the Van Amersfoort Racing teammate of Vesti, Drugovich overtook the two ADAC Berlin-Brandenburg drivers Oliver Caldwell and Sophia Flörsch. He went on the finish in a dissapointing 18th and thereby lost out on important Championship points.
The first three drivers in the field were driving behind each other without really making any moves.
So that resulted in Lirim Zendeli winning the race, ahead of Kim Luis Schramm and Fabio Scherer, making it a US Racing 2-3. Andreas Estner and Neuhauser Racing made it home in a very impressive fourth ahead of the Championship leader Juri Vips, who bridged an even bigger gap to Drugovich and Marcus Armstrong, where the latter only finished 10th.
So that made it the perfect day for ADAC Berlin-Brandenburg team, which is run by Mücke Motorsport. Only 30 minutes before the start of the ADAC Formula 4 race, they had crossed the line in ADAC GT Masters as winners as well.
Race 2 and 3 of the weekend will be run on Sunday.
