Campbell-Pilling fastest by just 0.001s in British F4’s Donington practice

Photo: Jakob Ebrey Photography

Argenti Motorsport’s Rowan Campbell-Pilling was fastest by just one thousandth of a second in British Formula 4 practice on Donington Park’s Grand Prix layout.

There were two practice sessions on Thursday, with teams getting a day of rest before track action resumes on Saturday.

Championship leader Deagen Fairclough was fastest in FP1, with the Hitech GP driver setting a 1m28.926s to pip Campbell-Pilling to top spot by 0.086 seconds.

There was then a gap of 0.402s to Rodin Motorsport’s Alex Ninovic in third, who improved on his final lap and was 0.1s ahead of his team-mate Jack Sherwood in fourth. Between Sherwood and Xcel Motorsport’s Zack Scoular in 12th place the pace difference was 0.353s.

Everyone improved their personal best laptimes in FP2 aside from Virtuosi Racing’s Maxwell Dodds, who was 14th in the first session but had an incident that ruled him out of the second.

Campbell-Pilling lowered the pace to 1m28.563s, with Fairclough just 0.001s slower and Ninovic only 0.052s off top spot. Sherwood was again fourth, 0.183s slower than Campbell-Pilling, and Hitech’s Reza Seewooruthun was only 0.007s behind him in fifth. Scoular rose to sixth place, ahead of Argenti’s Yuanpu Cui and Rodin’s Jame Higgins who were both within 0.5s of the pace.

Only four of the 17 drivers on track failed to get within a second of the benchmark laptime, with Virtuosi’s Yuhao Fu propping up the timesheet.

Fortec Motorsports’ Kai Daryanani did the most running over the day, cmpleting 52 laps.

This weekend’s schedule features four races rather than three, as it includes the rescheduled race that was supposed to take place during the season-opening round at Donington Park in April.

Free practice results