In his single-seater debut with AKM Motorsport in Italian F4 at Imola, Red Bull junior Enzo Deligny finished all three of his races in the points, taking 10th, 8th and 10th despite starting 15th or lower for each. He reflects on the start of his 2023 season in a column for Feeder Series.

By Enzo Deligny

Hello everyone, and welcome to my column! I am writing it on my way back to Milan, a few hours after the final race of the weekend.

This is my first year in single-seaters and I am competing with Campos Racing in Spanish F4 starting this week. I wanted to do one F4 round before the beginning of the season to get prepared and I got this opportunity with AKM for the first Italian F4 meeting at Imola.

First and foremost, the objective was to learn as much as possible, to apprehend the format of the weekends, the race starts, how to manage a race, how to battle, how to defend, how to overtake. I did not have any specific target, but a top 15 would have already been great. 

Unfortunately, I have to admit the qualifying was far from perfect, with several mistakes from my side. It was a little wet, and I struggled to adapt; I was a bit nervous. I pushed instantly when I should have remained calm, assessed the track conditions and pushed progressively. That was a big lesson, and I will definitely learn from it.

But it was much better during the races, when I would say I really extracted the best from the car. I passed many other drivers, and I managed to finish in the points in every race. Overall, it was very positive to be the first driver from the team to score points since 2021. I don’t think I could have done much better than P8–P10 because I just couldn’t follow the cars in front.

I am pretty happy that I was able to avoid contact and all the accidents. It was something that I was pretty strong at in karting already. I am really aware of my surroundings. I see a lot of drivers that take some useless risks in front of me, while most of the time, I know how to assess the risk. That’s how I managed to avoid all the race incidents this weekend.

This round is really going to help me for the rest of my season. I really loved doing this weekend with AKM and Marco Antonelli, who did everything to make me feel at home, and I can only thank them for all that they did.

I didn’t have much pressure for this weekend at Imola. I was there to learn, and it was better to do that at a round with low stakes rather than at the opening round of Spanish F4 at Spa. I will be less stressed especially during the race starts and the battles.

At Spa, I will have to be at the top of the order, fight in front, and make sure I have a good baseline so that I can progress during the rest of the season.

Edited by Perceval Wolff

Header photo credit: Italian F4 Championship / ACI Sport