Carlin’s Oliver Gray narrowly claimed the fastest time in testing for the ROKiT F4 British Championship certified by FIA triple header at Brands Hatch this weekend.
The Williams Racing Academy Driver was quickest in both 45-minute practice sessions around a scorching hot, 1.2-mile Indy circuit, but was pushed all the way by championship leader Alex Dunne (Hitech GP), the Irishman getting within a whisker of Gray’s benchmark, just 0.004 seconds adrift.
The pair head into the weekend at Brands separated by 37 points at the championship summit in Dunne’s favour after his brace of victories at the season opener, and the battle between the pair looks set to scale new heights at the iconic Kent venue this weekend.
JHR Developments’ Joseph Loake briefly interjected into the battle for top spot, but slipped back to third ahead of team-mate Georgi Dimitrov in the final reckoning. The duo served up a fiery on-track battle in the reverse grid contest at Donington three weeks ago, but will need to work together to move back into the championship picture proper.
McLaren junior Ugo Ugochukwu steered his Carlin challenger to fifth spot, albeit with an identical time to Dimitrov, behind by dint of setting it later in the session. Aiden Neate led Phinsys by Argenti team-mate Daniel Guinchard in sixth and seventh respectively.
Eduardo Coseteng enjoyed an improved run to eighth in the afternoon, moving ahead of Carlin’s Louis Sharp, who makes his long-awaited debut this weekend having turned 15, and therefore become eligible to race, on the Thursday prior to the meeting.
Noah Lisle made it all three JHR cars inside the top ten, narrowly ahead of Virtuosi pairing Edward Pearson and Michael Shin. Adam Fitzgerald (Argenti) was next, with Joel Pearson (Chris Dittmann Racing) sandwiched by the Hitech GP runners of Oliver Stewart and Daniel Mavlyutov in 14th, 15th and 16th respectively.
Qualifying kicks off the competitive action at 09:00 (BST) on Saturday (14 May), with two races to follow later at 13:25 and 17:10, the second of which features a partially-reverse grid, based on flipping the ten fastest qualifying times.
Sunday’s finale, broadcast live and free-to-air in the UK on ITV, is scheduled to get underway at 14:50.
