Alex Crosbie won a thrilling race at New Jersey Motorsports Park (NJMP) to earn his first career victory in Formula 4 United States Championship (F4 U.S.) competition. After a highly contested battle with his Crosslink Kiwi Motorsport teammate Nicolas Stati (No. 15 AGI Sport Ligier JS F422), Crosbie (No. 41 Crosslink Kiwi Motorsport Ligier JS F422) ultimately emerged the winner in Race 1 of the New Jersey Lottery SpeedTour weekend.
In a two-by-two rolling start, Stati led the field to the green flag. However, as has been the fashion for the 2024 season, the F4 U.S. field showed just how competitive the new Ligier JS F422 chassis and Ligier Storm engine can be, immediately jumping two- and three-wide as they raced toward Turn 1. Stati initially had the point, but by the time they reached Turn 1, fourth-place starter Pablo Benites Jr. (No. 44 Scuderia Buell Ligier JS F422) had pulled to his outside to overtake the lead. Initially pulling away to form a gap, it wasn’t long before Benites Jr. found himself back under pressure from Stati and Crosbie as the handling on his car started to fade. For 10 minutes, the three raced nose to tail, jockeying for position, with Stati and Crosbie eventually prevailing to claim first and second, respectively.
Pulling away from Benites Jr., the battle was on between the Crosslink Kiwi Motorsport teammates. Less than a second separated the two drivers for the final 20 minutes of the race, as they swapped positions back and forth until Crosbie finally emerged the leader and started racing toward the checkered flag. When they took the checkered flag, Crosbie edged Stati by just 0.490 seconds, with Benites Jr. crossing the line in third.
During post-race technical inspection, officials found that the No. 44’s car, and car plus driver, failed to make minimum weight. A post-race Stewards Decision was issued, which relegated Benites Jr. to fifth in the official results. As such, Barrett Wolfe (No. 13 Crosslink Kiwi Motorsport Ligier JS F422) was promoted to third place, to earn the final podium position.
“It was definitely a hard race,” said Crosbie from atop the podium. “Nicholas [Stati] made it difficult to get past and I couldn’t run away with it. I just had too much pressure from him, but it was definitely a great, clean race and we had a lot of fun.”
F4 U.S. will feature a doubleheader at NJMP Sunday, with lights out for Race 2 scheduled at 11:05am ET and Race 3 to follow at 4:25pm ET. A live stream of the races from the New Jersey Lottery SpeedTour weekend will be available at YouTube.com/SpeedTourTV, with live timing and scoring accessed on the Race Monitor app. Additional news and updates will be posted on the series’ Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.