Rd1 Paul Ricard, Race 3 Report

Race 3 of round one of 2021 Italian Formula 4 Championship powered by Abarth had ups and downs for Georgis Markogiannis. He recovered from a bad start and from dead last, climbed back to 22nd place!

Round 1, Paul Ricard
Race 3
Track Temperature: 33
Air Temperature: 19
Grid Position: 30
Finish: 22
Best Lap (7): 2:06.660

How Georgis’ race unfolded
Even though the tough qualifying had placed the 16-year-old only 30th on the grid (among 37 cars), his bad start made things even worse, placing him last.

But with the track temperature raising by 14 degrees in comparison with this morning’s race, the Greek driver soon got into rhythm and started to cover the lost ground. Having benefited by the collision of the Russians Kirill Smal (PREMA)-Nikita Bedrin (Van Amersfoort Racing), on lap 3 he overtook his teammate at CRAM, Nicolas Baptiste, and climbed to 32nd place.

On lap 4, Georgis made two successful overtake attempts, against Pedro Perino (DR Formula) and Marcus Amand (R-ACE GP), while on the next lap, he placed himself in front of his teammate, Vittorio Catino. Soon he has following closely the opponents next up the rankings.

Georgis showed great reflexes as he avoided the colliding cars of Jorge Garciarce (Jenzer), Erick Zuniga (BWT Muecke) and Levente Revesz (AKM). After Pietro Armanni (Iron Lynx SRL) dived into the pits, he now was up to 25th place.

The unsuccessful attempt to overtake his teammate, Zanfari Suleiman, meant he lost momentum and a place against Amand. Soon after, the CRAM cars of Baptiste-Catino collided, which meant the Safety Car was deployed.

Clearing up the track from the stranded cars proved not an easy task for the track marshals, so Georgis lost the opportunity to take advantage of his great pace at this stage of the race. Which he proved when the Safety Car returned to the pits. During the penultimate lap, he took advantage of Hamda al Qubaisi (PREMA) and Lorenzo Patrese (AKM) mistakes and on the last lap, he pulled of a double overtake on Amand and Suleiman.

So, he saw the chequered flag 22th (and 7th best rookie), gaining place during the course of the race for the third consecutive time.

The race was again won by the German Tim Tramnitz (US Racing). The British Oliver Bearman (Van Amersfoort Racing) and the Russian Vlad Lomko (US Racing) completed the Top-3.

What Georgis Said
«Unfortunately I lost ground at the start, my engine shut off and I was last. But within two laps Ι manages to cover the last ground to the cars in front. From then on, it was a steady rising course, with a lot of battles. The climax was in the last lap, when in the last sector, I overtook two cars from the outside! For sure the final result isn’t satisfactory but we had nice battles and I managed, even in the last race, even with a finished set of tires, to keep up a steady, keep racing pace, better than the one of the cars in front of me».

Video Replay
You can watch the second Paul Ricard race, below…

What’s next
Round 2 of the championship is the Misano race during 4-6 of June. Georgis will be absent from this round, due to school exams. The next challenge for the Greek driver will be the Vallelunga race, June 25-27.