12th April 2019
The winter break seemed to go on forever so I was really keen to get going after all the testing we had done in the offseason. Historically, I’ve always had a good time at Brands, so I was happy to start my first season in F4 here again.
Qualifying was ok, I was a bit nervous, to begin with, but soon settled into a good rhythm to get some good lap times, nothing amazing but I didn’t reach my full potential either, to get a P6 and P4 in the first and third races respectively.
The second race does a grid reverse based on the result of the first race on the first 6 places, so it does mix things up a bit and make for a more interesting dynamic.
The first race I started really well, managed to get into 3 rd by the fourth corner, but as the race progressed I got a bit hung up in my head and couldn’t move forward.
I was catching the leaders until I made a small mistake which put me on the grass and lost my tyre temperatures, and slowly dropped back to 7th, which I was really disappointed about. I had the whole of that night to mull over what happened and really had to sort my head out and move on as I had two more races to do.
The second race the next day was delayed due to fog so consequently, we had two races shown live on ITV4, which was a massive bonus to my sponsors Copart and Vans Direct as I had the onboard camera!
Determined to improve on the previous days’ performance, I started the race in 7 th and slowly picked my way through the pack until I was behind Seb (Alvarez, my teammate) and we had a great battle which ended with me getting past him for 3 rd place, so the race was on to catch the two in front of me, but they were a good 6secs up the road.
Fortunately for me, they had a coming together which took Zane Maloney off, so I finished 2nd behind Luke (Browning, my old rival from Ginetta Junior days) but as luck would have it, he was penalized 10secs for the contact with Maloney and I was the WINNER!! In only my second F4 race!
Buoyed by the win, and starting P4 in the final race of the day, it was finally a dry track and so conditions were different again. It was less manic and I was pleased to keep the pace of the guys in front and bring it home again in 4th with little drama.
So I leave Brands 3rd in the Championship, with the Double R team-leading which is just brilliant. Really looking forward to Donington at the end of the month and hoping to improve my points tally and learn a little more.