In his second column for Feeder Series, 15-year-old Enzo Deligny reflects on his successful Spanish F4 debut with Campos while also dealing with an exam period at school.

By Enzo Deligny

Hello everyone, and welcome back to my column! Many things have happened since last time with the opening two rounds of Spanish F4 with Campos Racing at Spa-Francorchamps and Motorland Aragon. I am writing this column between two study sessions, as I will have some school exams in the coming week.

Unfortunately, the season did not kick off as I expected at Spa-Francorchamps. It was not an ideal start, and I think that the results – 22nd, fourth and 16th – did not show our real potential. For sure, there have been some mistakes from my side, but we have also been pretty unlucky. In the first race, I did a silly mistake on my own when it started raining. It was a big mistake with big consequences for my result. Of course, I was disappointed, but I knew these kinds of things could happen in my first races.

The second race overall was okay. I lost time during some battles by doing one or two little mistakes, but finishing fourth and scoring 10 points was important. And for the third race… I really drove well, overtaking a lot of drivers after starting from 11th on the grid. Each decision I took was the right one. It was a really enjoyable race.

In the final lap, I was fourth and virtually third with Rinicella’s post-race penalty, but Théophile Naël did too much in the final corner and we collided [Naël received a three-place grid drop for this incident]. I don’t really understand why he did that because we were both going to score very big points. That was an unlucky end to a frustrating weekend.

The most recent weekend at Motorland was much simpler and calmer too. We were able to show our true potential with a win and two second places. It was not absolutely perfect as I didn’t score all the points available, but we are getting closer to this.

I am really glad I was able to clinch my first win at Race 1 [following Christian Ho’s penalty for track limits]. Of course, I would have preferred to cross the finish line in first, but the plan during the race was to put as much pressure as I could on Christian. I could see that as soon as I was getting closer, he was pushing a bit too much and getting over track limits.

Eventually, at one moment, my engineer told me that Christian got a two-second penalty and told me not to try to overtake him so I wouldn’t lose any time. I did not try to pass him; I just saved my tires for the upcoming races and made sure to stay within two seconds of him.

It is really great for me to score these big points and to really launch my championship. The week before Motorland, I was working on revising for my exams, while everybody in the team was working on the simulator. That was not an ideal preparation for this round, so I can’t wait for these exams to finish.

The next round will be at Navarra. Probably not my favourite track of the season, but I still really like it. We were always quick in testing there, and I believe we will also be able to score good results. And this time, I will be able to spend the whole week before this round with the team, working on the simulator. It doesn’t mean the result will be better, but I will be more prepared.

Edited by Perceval Wolff

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency / Red Bull Content Pool