McLaughlin extends British F4 lead with Silverstone win

Photo: Jakob Ebrey Photography

Fionn McLaughlin held off Tommy Harfield to win the opening British Formula 4 race of the weekend at Silverstone.

Harfield kept McLaughlin under pressure throughout the race, but the points leader didn’t put a wheel wrong and finished 0.456 seconds clear at the chequered flag.

Chris Dittmann Racing driver Harfield had started from pole alongside Ary Bansal with McLaughlin third. Hitech GP driver McLaughlin got the best start and jumped into the race lead on the opening lap, while Harfield held onto second. The pair pulled away from the rest of the field, getting more than a second clear of Bansal who had a solitary race in third.

Through the first half of the race, McLaughlin managed to keep Harfield at arms length, but his chaser gradually closed the gap. In the final laps, Harfield was less than 0.2s from the race leader and looking for a way through. On the final lap, however, McLaughlin pulled clear again to finish almost half a second ahead of Harfield.

The victory extends McLaughlin’s gap at the front of the championship standings, as nearest rival Martin Molnar could only manage ninth overall.

There was drama on the opening lap when Henry Joslyn and Thomas Bearman had an incident at turn three while battling in the midfield. Both drivers were taken out of the race, but the incident was cleared without a stoppage. Xavier Avramides was forced to pit a few laps later with front wing damage, but returned to the track to finish the race.

After the opening lap, there was no movement within the top 10. Jimmy Piszcyk and Ethan Jeff-Hall passed Dries Van Langendonck at the start and kept out of reach of the rookie driver, but couldn’t challenge the race leaders.

Van Langendonck was kept under pressure from Adam Al Azhari, who got a good start to jump up from ninth to seventh, but there were no opportunities for Al Azhari to overtake his Rodin Motorsport team-mate. Rowan Campbell-Pilling finished eighth ahead of Molnar.

The closest battle for much of the race was at the tail end of the top 10. Ella Lloyd held onto 10th on track, but a five-second time penalty for track limits dropped her down the order. That meant the close battle between Chase Fernandez and August Raber was for the final points paying position. Fernandez just managed to get his nose ahead of Raber to take 10th, with only 0.409s separating them at the chequered flag.

Race results (22 laps)