Carlin’s Oliver Gray has vowed to bounce back with a race-winning car at Brands Hatch after a steady start to his ROKiT F4 British Championship certified by FIA title push at Donington Park last weekend (23-24 April).
The Williams Racing Academy Driver arrived at the 1.97-mile Leicestershire venue among this season’s title favourites, and demonstrated why after qualifying fourth in a highly-competitive session on Saturday morning, before blasting past Aiden Neate and team-mate Ugo Ugochukwu to finish second in the opener behind championship leader Alex Dunne.
Neate and Gray suffered a setback during the reverse grid contest on Sunday morning, contact at Redgate causing damage to the front wing and right-rear tyre respectively. Both were forced to pit, and from there retired.
The 16-year-old rallied for the ITV4-televised finale to score his second podium of the weekend in third behind Neate and race-winner Dunne, who he now trails by 37 points at the championship summit.
“[I’m] pretty pleased,” reflected Gray. “Feel like we’re lacking a bit of pace, to be honest. But we’ll regroup, the team and come back at Brands hopefully with a strong pace.”
“I think I came in with the right approach this weekend, to be honest. I had high hopes, but I think we delivered a bit of a disappointing result [in Race 2] this morning. But as long as we made it count in the two main races, I think we scored good points, we’re coming away with second in the championship, so yeah – happy.”
“I mean, for sure I will definitely go into great detail, me and Carlin. And yeah, we’ll look at every little detail and come back at Brands with a race-winning car.”
Brands Hatch’s Indy circuit hosts the next three rounds of the 2022 season on 13-15 May.
