Photo: Jakob Ebrey Photography
Red Bull junior Fionn McLaughlin topped a tight qualifying session for British Formula 4’s non-championship round supporting Formula 1’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone.
The Hitech driver had been quickest by six tenths of a second in Friday afternoon’s practice session but led the Saturday morning qualifying by just 0.029s in front of Tommy Harfield.
On a greasy track after overnight rain drivers pushed to find the limits early on, Henry Joslyn topping the timing screens with a 2m06.277s closely followed by Fortec team-mate Ary Banal, who, despite going purple in the first two sectors, settled for second.
Their time at the top didn’t last long though and, with just 25 minutes to set the quickest time, drivers began to improve rapidly.
Ethan Jeff-Hall went top only to be displaced by Thomas Bearman, the young Brit racing at the same event as his older brother and Haas F1 driver Oliver for the first time in his career.
Ella Lloyd went top with 15 minutes remaining with a 2m02.114s before she was relegated to second by Martin Molnar. Bansal set an identical time but again had to settle for second overall.
Irishman McLaughlin went to the top with a 2m01.755s before being demoted by Bearman who went fractionally quicker by 0.045s.
With five minutes left McLaughlin regained top spot with a 2m01.323s and went even quicker on his following lap, becoming the first driver to step under the 2m01s mark with a 2m00.832s.
Bearman behind improved but not by enough and dropped down to fifth as Harfield, Molnar and Salim Hanna went faster, Harfield claimed second by just over a tenth of a second to Molnar in third.
A spin at Abbey for Charlie Edge briefly bought out the yellow flags as the British driver recovered back onto the track.
McLaughlin remained at the top and, despite failing to improve on his final lap, claimed pole ahead of Harfield in second and Molnar, the top three separated by just 0.132 tenths of a second.
Hanna maintained fourth by 0.022s ahead of Bearman, and set the best second-fastest time to claim race one pole in front of Jeff-Hall, Rowan Campbell-Pilling and Bansal, who were sixth, seventh and eighth fastest in the session.
Qualifying round-up
Race 1 grid (second-fastest times)
1 Salim Hanna Virtuosi Racing 2m01.142s
2 Ethan Jeff-Hall Argenti +0.044s
3 Rowan Campbell-Pilling +0.045s
4 Ary Bansal Fortec Motorsports +0.135s
5 Fionn McLaughlin Hitech +0.181s
6 Theo Palmer Xcel Motorsport +0.239s
7 Tommy Harfield Chris Dittmann Racing +0.244s
8 Thomas Bearman Hitech +0.286s
9 Martin Molnar Virtuosi Racing +0.306s
10 James Piszcyk Rodin Motorsport +0.345s
Race 2 grid (fastest times)
1 McLaughlin 2m00.832s
2 Harfield +0.029s
3 Molnar +0.132s
4 Hanna +0.154s
5 Bearman +0.176s
6 Jeff-Hall +0.188s
7 Campbell-Pilling +0.220s
8 Bansal +0.244s
9 Palmer +0.410s
10 Oleksandr Savinkov Virtuosi Racing +0.477s