Maciej Gładysz was fastest in Saturday’s qualifying and took victory in races one and two at MotorLand Aragón, but Keanu Al Azhari nonetheless walked away with a healthy championship lead after winning race three.

By Juan Arroyo

Every Spanish F4 round this season has had one driver come along and dominate the opposition. This time around, it was Maciej Gładysz’s turn.

With two victories from pole, the MP Motorsport driver was having his best weekend yet before a first-lap collision in race three gave him a puncture and dropped him to the back of the field.

The eventual victor of that race was the ever-consistent Keanu Al Azhari, who now leads the championship by 34 points over Mattia Colnaghi. Al Azhari’s win was his third in four rounds, extending his podium count to eight for the season.

With Gładysz now trailing Colnaghi by just two points, it’s turning into an all-MP party at the top of Spanish F4, but more drivers than just the top three have reason to celebrate this weekend.

Red Bull junior Enzo Tarnvanichkul of Campos Racing managed to achieve his first top-five finishes of the season, including his maiden podium. MP’s René Lammers achieved his maiden F4 podium after a difficult run of form the last two rounds, while Adam Al Azhari, Keanu’s younger brother, scored points with Tecnicar in just his second F4 weekend.

Feeder Series breaks down the main talking points of the weekend.

Can anyone beat Al Azhari to the title?

At every weekend where one driver has shown up and dominated – see Fluxá, Colnaghi, Gładysz – another has always been close behind and ready to pick up the pieces if not take race wins himself: Keanu Al Azhari. It’s precisely the reason he holds a 34-point advantage in the standings, with an average finishing position of 6.67.

When Fluxá showed up at the season opener in Jarama and took two wins, Al Azhari picked up two podiums and a points finish; Al Azhari went unmatched in Portimão with two pole positions, two victories and a second-place finish; as Colnaghi picked up two wins in succession at Le Castellet, Al Azhari picked up two second places.

The Emirati’s worst weekend in terms of points was this one at Aragón, primarily because in race one, a 10-second post-race penalty for causing a collision with Campos driver Jan Przyrowski dropped him from third to 11th.

It would take some collapse – like Arvid Lindblad’s in Italian F4 last season – from Al Azhari to lose the title from this point onwards. All he has to do is keep it on the road the same way he’s done all season.

Will Enzo Tarnvanichkul keep up this form?

Tarnvanichkul’s form this season has been below his pre-season expectations. A few months ago, the Thai driver told Feeder Series that “the expectation is to win” at the opener in Jarama and that he would be aiming for a top-three finish in the drivers’ championship. It has not turned out that way.

Tarnvanichkul had only scored points in two out of nine races over the first three rounds, but this weekend marked a potential renaissance for the Red Bull junior. Not only did he secure his first top-five finish of the season, but he also achieved his maiden F4 podium with third in race one, albeit as a result of Al Azhari’s penalty. He then achieved fifth- and 10th-place finishes in the two Sunday races.

The third-place finish came at a crucial time for the 15-year-old, whose confidence had been dented after a challenging start in F4.

Tarnvanichkul predicted he would score similar results the rest of the season. Nevertheless, he said he and Campos would still have to adjust to the series’ harder tyre compound for this year, which he counts as a contributing factor to his early results.

“With the harder compound of tyre than last year, we’re struggling a lot,” Tarnvanichkul told Feeder Series. “We’re not going to be as fast as we were before, so top-three, top-five, top-10 [finishes are] actually quite good for us at the moment.”

“We should aim to be top 10 every race like we did this week, even though there was much more potential because I had a very big problem with tyre warm-up. We ran quite an aggressive setup, so the tyre warm-up was heavily affected, but still it was a good week.”

Saintéloc and Drivex’s battle quietly picks up

Drivex and Saintéloc Racing are in the midst of a tight battle for sixth in the teams’ standings. After four rounds, Drivex are on 29 points and Saintéloc on 24 points.

Most of Saintéloc’s tally has come from Matteo Quintarelli, who had a strong opening round with ninth- and fourth-placed finishes in races two and three respectively. The Emirati-licenced driver padded that with 12 additional points from seventh-place finishes in the 30-minute races at Le Castellet, bringing up his total to 26 points for the season.

Yevan David’s seventh place at the season opener added another six, and he repeated that result with a climb from 25th in race three at Aragón.

The Spanish outfit, by contrast, have countryman Juan Cota leading the way, with 26 of their points coming thanks to him. Fifteen of those came from Cota’s third place in race one at Le Castellet, and he has three other top-10 finishes this year, including a ninth place in race two this weekend Meanwhile, Mikkel Pedersen, scoreless until this weekend, finished 10th and eighth in race one and race two respectively, contributing three points to Drivex’s tally.

Francisco Macedo is signed up to the Spanish outfit and also achieved a ninth-placed finish this weekend, but the Portuguese driver’s points only count towards its satellite team, DXR. Matúš Ryba, another of Drivex’s rookies, has no points so far.

Where is the next round?

Valencia will host the fifth round of the championship at Circuit Ricardo Tormo on 13–15 September.

The track proved to be the site of a fierce battle between MP, Saintéloc and Campos in 2023, with all of their top drivers taking a win each. Eventual champion Théophile Naël was on track to seal the title a round early after taking second place and a victory in the first two races, but he fell to 19th in race three from pole after struggling to get off the line and earning a time penalty for exceeding track limits one too many times.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency