Rodrigues ‘shows teeth’ at Dubai, scores first points

After the first two rounds of the Formula 4 UAE Championship when local racer Tiago Rodrigues seemed to be out of the fight, Round 3, raced over the weekend at the Dubai Autodrome, saw Rodrigues finally “showing the teeth” and fiercely fighting for one of the top spots.

The one weekend break on the championship turned out well for the local racer who showed up for Round 3, showing significant improvement and battling for a place in the Top 10.

Rodrigues’s improvement was obvious right from the start of the weekend as, due to a better qualifying session, he finished in tenth place on the grid for Race 1 on Saturday (Feb. 3).

Steadily fighting for a spot in the Top 10, Rodrigues eventually finished in eighth position after contact with another driver in the last lap damaged his car’s front wing.

Rodrigues was in seventh position at the time of contact and eventually lost this place to Doriane Pin on the last turn. Still, Rodrigues scored his first four points on F4 UAE.

The Race 1 winner was the pole-sitter Nikita Bedrin, who took the checkered flag in front of Kean Nakamura-Berta and Dion Gowda.

Benefiting from the inverted grid for the first 12 positions, as is always that case in Race 2, Rodrigues started the second race of the day from fifth position on the grid.

At the start, Rodrigues kept his cool and managed to jump to fourth and to run in podium position for some time.

In the second half of this race, a fierce battle took place between the fifth to tenth position with constant overtakes, contact between cars, and constant pressure from this second group of racers chasing the leader.

In the middle of the fight for sixth position, Rodrigues was eventually pushed back and dropped to eleventh on the last lap.

Although the position is not bad, he showed that he had race pace and skills to place in the Top 5 on Race 2, which unfortunately did not eventuate.

The winner of Race 2 was Alex Powell, followed by Keanu Al Azhari and Jack Beeton.

For the third and last race of the weekend, raced on Sunday afternoon, Rodrigues started from seventh on the grid and ran most of the race in sixth until the last lap when, while fighting from sixth position with Deagen Fairclough, the pair crashed and their cars ended up entangled. Rodrigues’s car was seen hanging on top of Fairclough’s car, putting an end to the race for both and making for a bitter end to a weekend that had been, until then, quite sweet for the local teenager.

The winner of the final race was Bedrin, followed by Dubai’s Al Azhari, and then Nakamura-Berta.

The championship returns this weekend to the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi for Round 4 of the championship, which will be raced between Feb. 9 and 11.

The local racer is currently in eighteenth position (out of 37) in the driver’s championship that is currently led by Freddie Slater (135 points), which is two more than Al Azhari in second. Third overall is Bedrin with 124 points.