F4 Italy 2016 - Round 7 - Monza
Final Round of the Italian F4 Championship was taking place in the famous Autodromo di Monza. A lot was at stake for this Round as Marcos Siebert and Mick Schumacher were fighting for the Championship with the advantage of 19 points for the young Argentinian driver at the beginning of the week-end, Prema Powerteam and Jenzer Motorsport were fighting for the Team Championship with 15,5 points advantage for the Italian Team and Job Van Uitert and Raul Guzman were fighting for 3rd place in the Driver Championship with an advantage of 33 points for the Mexican driver.
A lot of driving time was scheduled for this Final Round as a 4h session was scheduled for the friday morning. At the end of it, Juri Vips from Prema had a clear gap of 6 tenths over the field, Job Van Uitert P6, Marcos Siebert P8, Diego Ciantini P23 and Giacomo Bianchi P24 were tuning their setup for the race week end and getting into the pace of working on their slip stream positioning for the crucial qualifying.
Free Practice 1 on an early saturday morning showed Job Van Uitert getting more and more confident with his car finishing the session in P2 behind Lorenzo Colombo. A bit more messy session with a lot of traffic which prevented the other Jenzer Boys to show their real potential as Marcos finished P21, Diego P23 and Giacomo P27.
Free Practice 2 happened two hours later and the Jenzer Boys sorted out their driving and preparing themselves to the qualifying. At the chequered flag, hopes were high with the strong performance of Job, P2 again and Marcos P4. Giacomo finished P25 and Diego P27.
Qualifying was concluding the tense Saturday and they were as usual, determining the starting position for Race 1 and Race 2. Unfortunately, it didn't go as it was planned : Job Van Uitert got a technical gremlin (electronics) on his car during the qualifying which was not allowing to shift down properly and therefore was only able to qualify P20 and P26 ; Marcos Siebert had some traffic problems and was able only to qualify P11 and P8, Giacomo Bianchi made his best qualifying of the season, putting his blue and black car in P14 and P16, Diego qualified P23 and P24. As Mick Schumacher qualified P3 and P6, it was promising an interesting sunday with 3 races to crown the Italian F4 Champion.
Race 1 : a lot of challenges was waiting our Jenzer Drivers : Marcos Siebert needed to score the maximum points starting P11 to avoid losing ground to his rival, Job Van Uitert target was to reach points from P20 as his car was cured from his electronics failure, Giacomo was targeting to enter the top 10 from his P14 starting positions and Diego needed to move up through the field. As always in Monza, the races show a lot of action and the early sunday morning race show some great racing from our drivers. Marcos Siebert, after a perfect start moved up, making great manoeuvres to reach P2 behind Mick Schumacher, while Job Van Uitert made a fantastic race, showing his Jenzer car's pace moving from P20 to P6 at the chequered flag. Despite a good start and while running P9, Giacomo Bianchi was hit from behind at the first chicane by his team mate Diego which caused a puncture and he had to pit to be able to go back on track to finish P18 while Ciantini had to go back to the box as well but didn't rejoin the race.
Race 2 : with starting P6 and P8 the two Championship contenders had a tough battle as Marcos needed only to score 3 points more than his challenger to secure the title. A few contacts between the two drivers during the race damaged their car (front wing damaged for Marcos and front wing broken for Mick). Mick had to pit to change his nose which was the turning point of the race as Marcos only then needed to finish the race to be crowned. He took the chequered flag in P5 and won the Italian F4 Championship. 61 years after his idol, Juan Manual Fangio, the Young Argentinian Driver with the same car number, #18, won the title in Monza. Another great race from Job Van Uitert which made a good effort from P26 to be P9 in the last lap (which was meaning he would start the last Race in P2) but a mistake in the last corner made him run wide and lost 4 positions to cross the finish line in only P13 not rewarding the efforts he made through the 28 minutes race. Diego finished his season on a P20 and Giacomo crossed the line in P23 after having lost a lot of positions at the start when he got stuck between two cars who had contact in the first chicane.
Race 3 : Final Race of the Season and 3rd race of the Day and Marcos Siebert took the start in P6 as the New F4 Champion and was hoping to conclude his season on the highest step of the podium to thank all the Jenzer People who worked hard for him the whole year but another driver decided differently as he missed his braking point and hit the young Argentinian driver in the first chicane and had to retire. Harder race from Job who was starting P13 but couldn't make better than P9 at the end of the race. Giacomo Bianchi made a brilliant race moving up from P23 to P12 to conclude on a high his first season in a formula car.
At the end of the week end, Jenzer Motorsport won the Driver Championship with Marcos Siebert, Job Van Uitert finished P4 in the championship and will try to follow the path of his Argentinian team mate next year. Jenzer Motorsport Team finished Runner Up in the Team Championship. Once again a great thank you to all the Jenzer Crew who fought hard and never counted its hours to provide to all the drivers the best car possible to fight at the front.
