Our 2023 champion, Louis Sharp has been on an amazing journey since clinching last year’s ROKiT British Formula 4 British Championship certified by FIA after taking the title in a thrilling season finale at Brands Hatch in early October.
The young New Zealander has since attended numerous award ceremonies and picked up armfuls of silverware. Less than four weeks after the season finale, Louis attended the TOCA Night of Champions where he was awarded his championship trophy, then at the start of December at the BRDC awards he was presented the coveted Henry Surtees Trophy, for the most outstanding performance by a BRDC Rising Star. Just days later on the way home for Christmas, he stopped off in Baku to collect his FIA Formula 4 trophy at the star-studded FIA Prize Giving.
Louis returned to London at the end of January in good time for Motorsport UK’s illustrious Night of Champions at Pall Mall’s Royal Automobile Club, where he was reunited with his hard-earned F4 trophy and honoured alongside each and every other British champions across a myriad of motorsport disciplines. From there, it was onto the BARC Awards Night where in addition to his British F4 championship win being celebrated, he was awarded the Peter Collins trophy, in recognition as the British Automobile Racing Club’s most promising junior driver competing in a BARC championship.
“It has been an amazing experience. It was so cool to be in Baku to see Max Verstappen crowned as F1 champion and it’s been an honour to meet so many really special people like Christian Horner [in Baku] and Ross Brawn [at Night of Champions] – they have all been super supportive. That has given me extra inspiration and even more determination to keep this success going.”
At the end of November British F4 Champion Louis was delighted to be voted National Racing Driver of the Year by the readers of Motorsport News, outscoring all the established BTCC top guns in the process.
Sharp believes the UK’s premier entry-level single-seater series has been the perfect proving ground for the next generation of F1 hopefuls.
“There are lots of really great reasons why we decided to compete in British F4,” he explained when attending the Motorsport UK Night of Champions. “The main reason is just how competitive the championship is, as we saw last year when the title race went right down to the wire. Heading into the final weekend there was just a single point between two of us… and then only a handful of points between us entering the last race. So it could have gone either way. That’s what made it so tough.
But that’s also what made it such a such a good year. I’d much rather have won the title in those circumstances than to have ran away with it. I really had to dig deep and fight. Coming out on top in the end, made the victory even sweeter.”
Louis, who also helped his Rodin Carlin team secure back-to-back F4 team titles, believes both the high quality of the teams and the challenging nature of the British circuits are two major benefits to any young gun with F1 aspirations.
Sharp also has some very special dates inked into his 2024 diary. As the reigning ROKiT British F4 champion, he will be spending a Grand Prix weekend embedded with McLaren Racing and will also profit from a year-long coaching programme and expert guidance from BWT Alpine Formula 1 Team at the Alpine Racing Human Performance Centre. That’s in addition to the day he has already spent on the Formula One simulator at the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team’s state-of-the-art campus in Brackley!
It seems that it’s been a busy few months for our 2023 ROKiT British F4 champion since the season concluded!
