After a summer break, Frank Porte Ruiz made his comeback from 22nd to 25th August on the Magny-Cours circuit, famous for having hosted 18 French Formula 1 Grands Prix in the past. In the 2024 French F4 Championship, the Andorran hopeful once again proved his worth, making some superb comebacks to increase his points tally. Frank remains convinced, however, that a better result would have been possible with a better Qualifying session, as he explains…
“I had an incident at the end of the day during private testing on Thursday. The FFSA Academy mechanics had to work on my car. As a result, I wasn’t able to prepare for Qualifying as I would have liked. Despite everything, I was pretty quick at the start of the session when a red flag cut my momentum when I was in 8th. When we restarted, several drivers improved, dropping me to 13th.”
In each of the three races, the Andorran got off to excellent starts. Unfortunately, his start in Race 1 was ruined after just a few laps. “I had to go off the track to avoid contact with two drivers who had lost their way on the Adelaide braking zone. I ended up 25th, before coming back to 19th. In Race 2, I overtook several cars at the start of the race to climb from 13th to 7th place. Race 3 was interrupted by several safety car periods, so I wasn’t able to move up the order and fight for the podium as I’d hoped. In the end I finished 6th.”
Frank Porte Ruiz’s progress continued in Race 3, this time with a return from 9th to 8th place, giving him important points in the standings. “The duels were non-stop, it was very intense. I realised that I had made further progress in this phase of the race, which is positive. I had managed to get up to 6th place, but my tyres showed signs of weakness in the closing laps and I lost two places.”
In the Championship standings, with two rounds to go, Frank is currently in 7th position, but a top-five finish is still on the cards. The next round will take place at Dijon from 13th-15th September, before a final round at Le Castellet from 4th-6th October.
Info Kartcom / Photo KSP – Guillaume Veuve