The races were held at the Dubai Autodrome and the organizers had to modify the main straight and add a few more rows to the starting grid.
The main discovery of the stage was the protégé of the Mercedes Formula 1 team Hugo Ugochukwu: the American driver won two races and in the third he lost to Arvid Lindblad of the Red Bull Junior program. Kirill Smal also fought among the leaders, but in the first race on the restart he fell back to sixth place, in the second he overtook Lindblad in third position and became fourth, and in the last race he made contact with Valerio Rinicella and finished . nineth.
Alexander Abkhazava, unlike Smal, was unable to score points, but the young rider coped brilliantly with the unfamiliar technique and finished 17th on the first run, ahead of more than half the field. In the second race, Abkhazava took 27th position, but in the third he moved up to 15th and showed his best result of the weekend.
Victoria Blokhina also demonstrated high speed, but technical problems prevented her from developing her potential. So, in the first race, the Russian racer’s car stalled before the warm-up lap, so she had to start from the pit lane, but Blokhin managed 30th place, ahead of several rivals.
On the second run, Victoria stormed into 27th place, but then one of her rivals damaged her front wing. However, even after a forced pit stop, Blokhin was ahead of teammate Lena Buhler and Fernando Barrichello, the son of legendary former F-1 driver Rubens Barrichello, and became 30th. The best for the Russian was the final race of the stage: during the race, Blokhin made up eight positions and ranked 25th.
Alexander Bolduev and Georgy Zhuravsky, two other Russians, failed to score points. Bolduev was 24th in race one, 25th in race two and didn’t finish in race three, while Zhuravsky was no better than 31st.
According to the results of the first stage, Hugo Ugochukvu confidently leads the overall standings, 21 points ahead of Arvid Lindblad. The top-3 is closed by Tuukka Taponen, and Kirill Smal is on the seventh row.
General classification after the first stage (top 10):
1. Hugo Ugochukwu (Prema) – 65 points.
2. Arvid Lindblad (high tech) – 44.
3. Tuukka Taponen (Mumbai Falcons) – 38.
4. Brando Badoer (Pinnacle VAR) – 28.
5. James Wharton (Bombay Falcons) – 27
6. Valerio Rinicella (MP) – 26.
7. Kirill Small (MP) – 22.
8. Valentin Kluss (PHM) – 14.
9. Teófilo Nael (Sainteloc) – 12.
10. Jesse Carrasquedo (Race) – 11.
The next round of Formula 4 in the United Arab Emirates will take place on January 27 and 28 in Kuwait.
