Photos: Jakob Ebrey Photography
With 14 wins, 22 podiums and 15 poles, Deagen Fairclough’s dominance of the 2024 British F4 season was unprecedented. The 18-year-old recalls to Formula Scout his pathway to success against the odds
Hailing from humble beginnings, Deagen Fairclough was an underdog during his time in karting, but he overcame financial constraints to rise up the ranks and hone his skills that have made him into the driver he is today.
“I started when I was five years old,” he recalls. “It was literally just me and my dad in karting. From five until I was 13 it was ‘lad and dad’. We’re a working class family and everyone knows how much of a struggle motorsport is. We were getting all the scraps from people, borrowing people’s spare engines to run in for them.
“It was an enjoyable one, we learned a lot because we didn’t have the money to buy the wet tyres in the earlier stages of racing. My mum and dad were so young when they had me so they were teenage parents. We’ve always been the underdog in most situations I feel, because [until now] we hadn’t really got any titles behind us.”
Fairclough took inspiration from the late Formula 1 legend Ayrton Senna, who famously drove around on slick tyres in wet conditions at his local kart track in Sao Paulo as a child to develop his driving skills.
“Those years in karting helped, especially in the wet as it’s mainly raining every day here in the UK,” Fairclough notes. “We had to go on slicks in the wet and that was a struggle, but we were able to get some decent results. We were lucky enough to scrape some money together and find some wets and use them once and that was one of the best times I had in the wet.
“It’s always searching for the grip and that’s the hardest thing. You can tell a real driver in the wet from watching. Senna was incredible in the wet, he always wanted it to rain, so I always looked up to Senna and wanted to be like him. Driving on slicks on a damp circuit was quite difficult but it only makes you a better driver.
Fairclough began car racing in a Citroen Saxo, which is a Junior Saloon Car
As the financial struggles grew, Fairclough swapped karting for a simulator, something that would help change his career a couple of years later.
“We took a year out of karting because it was just getting a little bit too much for us and my parents couldn’t keep up with it,” he says. “We ended up selling all my karting gear and getting a simulator and that was the step towards cars and seeing how I was with the manual gearbox and getting an eye-in from that. We’ve had it since I was 13, so we’ve had my simulator for quite a while and I still use it to this day.”
His first taste of car racing came in 2020 after winning a scholarship to join the Junior Saloon Car Championship. At the wheel of a 1600cc Citroen Saxo, he amassed three podiums and finished sixth in the standings.
“I didn’t really expect I’d win [the scholarship],” Fairclough admits. “We were just going for the experience so when they were calling out the people in third, second and first I was really not thinking my name would be out there. We won that day, and that’s what got us into cars.”
He then stepped up to a two-litre Ford Fiesta in 2021, racinh in the BRSCC’s Fiesta Junior Championship. He quickly formed a fierce rivalry with eventual champion Jenson Brickley but, despite taking eight wins, 12 podiums and seven pole positions, Fairclough missed out on a chance to fight for the title due to a late-season protest, as he explains.
“It was a mega year. Because we entered the first round as a guest it stepped us back a little. We only had it verbally that we’d get to keep the points and then when it got to the end of the season they protested me when I had a healthy points lead and I lost 150 points, which was a bit of a shame.”
Fairclough won multiple times in Fiesta Junior, but missed out on the title
It was midway through his Fiesta Junior campaign that Fairclough secured backing from British Touring Car Championship team Ciceley Motorsport. He looked set to continue in tin-tops until he won an Esports competition which came with a fully-funded drive in British Formula 4, and suddenly a career in single-seaters went from being a dream to reality.
“My goal was getting into GT3, a factory team, or into touring cars,” he reveals. “Getting that backing from Ciceley Motorsport when I was in Fiestas, it felt like a dream come true when I first had that. One day I said to my mum and dad I would love to just try a single-seater out and they were like ‘yeah, jog on’ because they knew how expensive normal racing is, let alone open-wheel which is just another level of money because it’s on the route to F1.
“We saw the huge ROKiT Racing Star competition, which I really didn’t believe was true when I saw it online: winning a fully-funded F4 seat. I put so much hard work into it, many hours on the sim, and was able to come away with that at the University of Bolton. I’m ever so grateful to ROKiT and Racing Star for setting that competition up otherwise I wouldn’t be here today. They’ve changed my life.”
Fairclough is still an avid sim racer, and like many drivers still uses Esports to help prepare for real-world events.
“I’ve just recently upgraded my equipment and I think it helps me massively pre-event,” he says. “It’s just mainly line-wise and getting your reference points before you go to a race circuit.
“If you can do a race run and stay consistent within two-tenths of your fastest lap time every 15, 20 laps, then that’s very good preparation because as soon as you turn up to the circuit you know where you’re braking, you know where you’re turning roughly, and that’s what helps me the most.
Fairclough’s single-seater break came when he won the ROKiT Racing Star Esports competition
“When you can do races, like on iRacing, against friends and people around the world you gain that racecraft and experience, so I find it helps massively. It’s just another way of testing and it’s enjoyable at the same time.”
Driving for JHR Developments, Fairclough had a solid first year in British F4, taking four wins, seven podiums and third in the standings. But, with his future remaining uncertain, he admits mistakes came as a result of trying too hard to impress.
“We didn’t really know when we were at JHR what was happening this year, if that was going to be the end of it. I was on the edge, I was so eager to get results straight away and there were lots of mistakes that cost us a lot of points. We were still able to get third in the championship and I think Hitech saw potential in me and then took me onboard this year.”
His switch to Hitech GP for 2024 brought instant results, with a win and a second place at the Donington Park season-opener followed by two more wins on Brands Hatch’s Indy layout.
“They’ve helped me so much, there’s so much I’ve learned and so much I’ve taken onboard, ” he reveals. “It will only help me when I go up the ladder hopefully. It’s been very good. A very nice approach to our race weekends, a lot of training as well. Using the Hitech facilities has helped, and I’ve had amazing people in the team that have helped me mentally and as a driver.”
Round three at Snetterton proved to be the only one where Fairclough didn’t win, and he then experienced mixed fortunes at Thruxton where he won race one but retired from the race three lead with a mechanical failure.
“It’s one of those situations,” he muses. “Everyone is bound to have a mechanical fault, it was no one’s fault that weekend. You can only learn from it and take the positives away because we were leading by six seconds and the car was very nice to drive and we were setting consistent laptimes.”
Fairclough took a record number of wins en-route to the British F4 crown in 2024
A win and another retirement followed at Silverstone’s Grand Prix layout, as the season reached its halfway point. But he was unstoppable thereon, winning nine times, only missing the podium three times and being crowned with five races to spare.
“To be honest, everything has just come along as a bonus really,” Fairclough reflects on his dominant season. “I’ve put a lot of hard work into it. The win record, the podium record, there’s so many records we’ve set this year. It doesn’t feel real if I’m honest. The team has been working so hard all season and it wouldn’t have been possible without them. I’m ever so grateful to everyone that’s helped me to get that achievement, and look forward to what we can do next year.”
Fairclough still had some driving left to do before switching his focus to 2025, having made the final four of this year’s Silverstone Autosport BRDC Award. He joined three other finalists in October at Silverstone, where each drove a MotorSport Vision Formula 2 car, a Ligier LMP3 prototype sportscar and an Aston Martin Vantage GT3. The winner will be announced at the beginning of next year, with a £200,000 cheque and a test drive in an Aston Martin F1 car among the prizes.
Fairclough is following in the footsteps of British F4 champions before him by making the step up to GB3 with Hitech next season, with the introduction of a new Tatuus MSV GB3-025 and a growing international calendar both appealing to him.
“GB3 is an ideal situation, they’re bringing out the new car and we can learn a lot from that because it’s not going to be too far off a Formula 3 car. In FIA F3 you need to be fully prepared and go straight for the championship, so getting that year behind us in GB3 and going around places around Europe I think will help massively.”
