Campbell-Pilling penalty hands McLaughlin his fourth British F4 win

Photo: Red Bull

Fionn McLaughlin won British Formula 4’s first race at Knockhill after on-the-road victor Rowan Campbell-Pilling was penalised for jumping the start.

Campbell-Pilling had started from pole and led the entire race, but could not create a large enough gap to McLaughlin to negate his five-second penalty and was classified second.

The race was ended a few minutes early by red flags brought out after contact between Ella Lloyd and Theo Palmer left the latter stranded at the side of the track.

It was a considerable jump start for Cambell-Pilling, who was already far up the road before the lights went out and everybody else set off.

McLaughlin overtook Thomas Bearman for second off the line and set about trying to reduce the three-second advantage Campbell-Pilling had given himself. The leader was able to maintan the gap though, and despite setting the fastest lap McLaughlin finished 3.509s behind. Once the penalty was applied, he earned his fourth win to grow his points lead.

Bearman was unable to stay with McLaughlin. Initially he was only around a second behind, but the top two were able to pull away from him and he was 0.586s shy of being able to benefit from Campbell-Pilling’s penalty.

He had a lonely race, with the close battle for fourth going on for so long that its participants finished over eight seconds behind him.

James Piszcyk held the position for much of the race, having snatched the position at the start, but was usually under pressure from Ethan Jeff-Hall. He made multiple attempts to find a way past, but Piszyck defended well.

There were two instances where Jeff-Hall did manage to draw alongside, but he then had to drop back in behind, before his pressure led to Piszcyk making a mistake, locking up and losing fourth.

By this point, there was a train of drivers behind and Piszcyk was immediately under attack from Tommy Harfield. He got past on the following lap, with Martin Molnar following through to demote Piszcyk to seventh.

At the back of the train were Palmer and Lloyd, and were locked in their own battle in the race’s closing stages. They made slight contact as lap 20 began, and the incident left Lloyd with damage but she was able to continue. Palmer was not as lucky, and once his car had come to a stop he could not get it moving again.

Despite being the cause of the race-ending red flags, the pair were classified eighth and ninth ahead of Cole Hewetson and Ary Bansal, who got a poor start after a strong qualifying put him fourth on the grid.

Race results (20 laps)