The 19-year-old French talent, third in his domestic F4 championship this season, enacted a tense struggle for victory with compatriot Rayan Caretti, and had just taken the lead when the unlucky Franco-Thai racer crashed out at the Solitude Esses on the eighth lap of 10. The clear-up operation meant that the race finished under the safety car.
Roussel, second in the Qualification race on Saturday, started from the front row and was able to slip down the inside of pole position man Emanuele Olivieri into the Reservoir Bend kink. Caretti then picked up the slipstream from the leading pair and further demoted Olivieri into Mandarin.
But Chinese F4 champion Shimo Zhang, who had started seventh, lost the rear end of his car at Mandarin Bend. And, as he speared across the track, he collected the unfortunate Japanese F4 runner-up Itsuki Sato, forcing both out of the race. Down at Lisboa Bend, Kyuho Lee hit the barriers and the safety car was called out to allow the stricken cars to be retrieved.
That was done very quickly, and Roussel took off in the lead once again as the green flags flew at the start of lap three. But Caretti was challenging and, at the beginning of the fourth lap, he picked up the slipstream from Roussel, and grabbed the lead at Lisboa Bend. Qualification Race winner Olivieri had been shadowing the leading pair but now, with Caretti in front, the Italian began to fall away slightly from the leading pair.
On the seventh lap, Roussel challenged Caretti on the outside line at Lisboa, and their battling brought Olivieri right back into contention. Next time around, Roussel made his move at the Mandarin kink to get in front. Caretti’s bid to retaliate sent him wide at Maternity Bend and, potentially with dirt on his tyres, he went ever wider through the successive bends before finally collecting the barrier through the snaking Solitude Esses. That significantly delayed Olivieri and the rest as they sought to sneak a path through on this narrow section of track. But it mattered not, because the safety car neutralised the race anyway.
F4 Middle East champion Olivieri therefore took second place ahead of Rintaro Sato. The Japanese driver, son of 2001 Macau Grand Prix winner and two-time Indy 500 victor Takuma Sato, had to start from 11th on the grid after a penalty for a procedural infringement cost him third place in the Qualification Race. But his move on Ary Bansal at Mandarin Bend, seconds after Roussel’s on Caretti at the same place, ended up rewarding him with a podium.
Indian driver Bansal, the GB4 champion, lost a further position in the immediate aftermath to Sebastian Wheldon, completing a superb fightback from the American son of the late IndyCar hero Dan Wheldon. After topping qualifying, Wheldon started the Qualification Race from pole but a crash on the first lap meant he lined up a lowly 15th for the World Cup before mounting a superb charge through the order to finish fourth.
Bansal claimed fifth ahead of Irish Red Bull Junior Fionn McLaughlin, the British F4 champion making good progress from 12th on the grid early on in the race. But McLaughlin, like Rintaro Sato in the Qualification Race, was given a post-race 30-second penalty for being out of position at the first safety car line on the formation lap, dropping him to the back of the field in the results.
Sixth in the results, from 17th in the starting line-up, was therefore Briton Thomas Bearman, brother of star F1 rookie Ollie Bearman. The top 10 was completed by Hong Kong’s Kimi Chan Yu Tsai in seventh, Macanese Marcus Cheong Man Hei in eighth, Argentina’s Central European Zone F4 champion Gino Trappa in ninth, and Macau’s 2023 Chinese F4 king Tiago Rodrigues in 10th.
But there was bad luck for two more F4 champions. Italian and Euro 4 title winner Kean Nakamura-Berta lost two laps in the pits early on having a technical issue seen to, and Alexandre Munoz, victorious in the French series, went out on the third lap at San Francisco Bend and had to watch season-long rivals Roussel, Caretti and Rintaro Sato fight it out at the front.
