Home Formula 4British F4 Lulham and O’Sullivan win British F4 Esports races at Silverstone

Lulham and O’Sullivan win British F4 Esports races at Silverstone

by Ida Wood

Christopher Lulham and Zak O’Sullivan won the two British Formula 4 iRacing Trophy Esports races on Silverstone’s National layout.

Fortec Motorsports’ Luke Browning set a 51.661s pole lap in the Dallara F317 Formula 3 car, with team-mate Lulham completing the front row 0.022 seconds behind.

Browning just held on to lead through the opening corner, but made an unforced error a lap later entering the Wellington Straight and span out of the lead.

Lulham inherited his place at the front an kept it for the rest of the 20-minute race, beating Arden’s Seb Priaulx by 1.671s.

SMP F4 regular Alexey Nesov completed the podium after a crash between backmarkers at Copse collected Carlin’s Zane Maloney and eliminated him from third place. BRDC British F3 race-winner Nico Varrone was fourth, while JHR Developments’ Abbi Pulling and Jayden Ojeda finished a distant but trouble-free fifth and sixth.

JHR’s James Hedley came on top in two crashes of his own causing to finish seventh, while O’Sullivan shrugged off an early assault by Carlin team-mate Christian Mansell. Title contender Browning recovered to ninth.

Simulator racer Nico Pino started the reversed grid race two from pole, but was passed straight away by Carlin’s Marijn Kremers. A combination of netcode error and careless driving behind led to a massive crash and the intervention of the safety car, with Maloney actually leading the pack away at the restart.

After just a few corners he then span himself out of the lead, leaving Mansell leading O’Sullivan up front. O’Sullivan spent a few laps in the leader’s wheeltracks before passing him for the lead, with Browning and Lulham following him through a lap later.

Maloney joined the podium battle at mid-distance, slicing past Lulham for third place on lap 11. Nesov was watching Maloney’s attacks closely, and the Barbadian claimed third from Mansell by running off track at Copse on lap 17. Rather than copy his move, Nesov chose to dive down the inside at Brooklands to pass Mansell, who then collided with a chasing Priaulx and put him out of the race.

The lead battle died down after that, with O’Sullivan heading Browning, Maloney and Nesov. Mansell came home fifth, ahead of Fortec’s Johnathan Hoggard and the closely matched duo of Lulham and Kremers.