Augustin Bernier’s rise to prominence was confirmed at the Nürburgring during the fourth round of the French F4 Championship where the Frenchman scored a superb pole position ahead of Andorra’s Frank Porte Ruiz and Belgium’s Yani Stevenheydens.
The clouds in the sky over the Eifel mountains were threatening, and a few raindrops fell at the end of the Qualifying session, but the drivers were able to take advantage of a perfectly dry track to try to place as high as possible on the starting grids of the three races scheduled for 27th and 28th July.
Following the advice of the FFSA Academy engineers and Pirelli technicians, the 25 drivers first tried to slowly but surely bring their tyres up to temperature, before unleashing the full power of their F4. Japan’s Taito Kato set the first reference time, going under 2 minutes 3 seconds on the five-kilometre Nürburgring circuit.
Jules Caranta then put in a brilliant effort, clocking a time of 2:02.232 to take provisional pole position ahead of Kato, Frenchman Augustin Bernier, Italian Leonardo Megna and Belgian Yani Stenvenheydens. An incident forced race management to bring out the red flag, sending the cars back to the pits.
When the session restarted, many cars were still improving. Augustin Bernier ended up setting the best time under 2:02, at exactly 2:01.956. Andorran Frank Porte Ruiz followed in 2nd place in 2:02.146 ahead of Stevenydens in 2:02.172. Without having been able to improve, Caranta finished 4th ahead of Arthur Dorison, who secured his first top-five finish of the season in Qualifying.
Provisional Championship leader Kato had to be satisfied with 6th place ahead of Luxembourg’s Chester Kieffer and Germany’s Montego Maassen, who is hoping to play an important role in this race in his home country. Behind Frenchman Jules Roussel, in 9th place, his compatriot Enzo Caldaras will have the privilege of starting 1st in Race 2 according to the principle of the inverted grid for the top 10 of the Qualifying session.
The classification of the best second fastest times, used to define the starting grid for Race 3, gave rise to a different hierarchy, with Stevenheydens 1st ahead of Bernier, Porte Ruiz, Dorison, Kieffer, Roussel, Caranta and Kieffer.
> F4 Nürburgring 2024 programme (round 4 of 7)
Saturday 27th July: Race 1 (11:30 – 12:00) and Race 2 (17:05 – 17:35)
Sunday 28th July: Race 3 (10:00 – 10:30)
