AVONDALE, La. (April 9, 2022) – Lochie Hughes won the opening race of the 2022 Formula 4 United States Championship presented by Honda (F4 U.S.) season on Saturday afternoon at NOLA Motorsports Park. The Gold Coast, Australia native avoided chaos in the closing laps to secure his first series’ win in his first F4 U.S. race.
Matt Christensen (No. 45 Velocity Racing Development) was in the point position for lights out at NOLA with teammate Noah Ping (No. 65 Velocity Racing Development Ligier JS F4) trailing. By lap 3, a battle for third ensued as Bryson Morris (No. 39 Crosslink Kiwi Motorsport JS F4) and Hughes put the pressure on Ping. Ping dropped to fourth, where he stayed until the caution flag waved on lap 8. Subsequently, the field restarted the event on lap 11 where Ping took the lead with a strong restart, and pushed Christensen back to second, followed by Hughes and Morris.
On lap 13, contact in Turn 5 between the No. 65 of Ping and teammate Christensen in the No. 45 removed both cars from contention. Hughes sailed by on Hankook tires as the caution flag waved and went on to lead the field to a yellow-checkered finish.
“I’m pretty happy,” exclaimed Hughes as he climbed from the car. “We got a little bit lucky there, but we were catching them. It was a bit of a crazy race—especially that restart going in to 1. I didn’t know what was going to happen. Everyone was locking up and almost crashing, but I’m really happy to take the win. I can’t thank the boys at Jay Howard Driving Development enough. Hopefully we can continue this on.”
F4 U.S. will take to the track for Rounds 2-3 of their NOLA SpeedTour event weekend tomorrow. Race 2 starts at 10 a.m. local time, followed by Race 3 at 1:50 p.m.
View the full field provisional race results, here: F4 U.S. Round 1 Provisional Results
