Despite a very uncertain weather forecast on Friday 5th May, the drivers in the French F4 Championship were able to take advantage of a completely dry track for the Free Practice session on Friday morning, as well as for the Qualifying session, which is so important to hope for a good result. On the Magny-Cours circuit, host of the second meeting of the 2023 season, Enzo Peugeot set the best time in the free session with a tiny gap of 64 hundredths over Evan Giltaire.
Giltaire, who led the Championship when he arrived in Nièvre, was not deterred by a red flag at the start of the official Qualifying session and decided to attack as soon as he restarted. He quickly set a reference time of 1:40.980, before improving again on the next lap: 1:40.579. In one step, he pushed back Enzo Peugeot and Romain Andriolo to a little more than 4 tenths. Behind the French trio, Japanese Hiyu Yamakoshi, Canadian Kevin Foster and Belgian Yani Stenvenheydens took the following positions.
Another red flag sent the FFSA Academy F4s back to the pits, allowing the tyres to cool down. With the exception of a few drivers who were victims of incidents, the academicians set off again to attack the stopwatch. A few improvements slightly modified the order. Not dislodged from his 1st place, Evan Giltaire put the nail in the coffin by gaining another tenth (1:40.459), and he also secured the best of the second-fastest times. The Frenchman will therefore start from pole position for Races 1 and 3 this weekend.
Peugeot and Andriolo kept the 2nd and 3rd places respectively, while the Spaniard Pol Lopez was 4th ahead of Yamakoshi, Foster and Stenvenheydens. Enzo Richer took 8th place for a few hundredths against the Italian Leonardo Megna and Adrien Closmenil. The latter will have the honour of starting 1st in Race 2, according to the principle of the inverted grid for the top 10 qualifiers.
