Sharp fastest in British F4 test on Brands Hatch’s Indy layout

Photo: Jakob Ebrey Photography

British Formula 4 tested on Brands Hatch’s Indy layout on Wednesday, although they will be racing on the full Grand Prix layout this weekend.

The day was split into a four-hour morning session and an afternoon session lasting two hours-and-45 minutes.

The morning session ran interruption-free, with JHR Developments’ Deagen Fairclough the fastest driver at first and setting several laps under 46 seconds before Hitech GP’s William Macintyre interrupted his time at the top with a 45.699s laptime.

Fairclough responded with a 45.638s, then improved by almost a tenth of a second two laps later.

The next driver to get to the top of the timesheet was Fortec Motorsports’ James Higgins, then with two successive improvements Rodin Carlin’s Louis Sharp lowered the pace to 45.211s.

He remained on top for 21 minutes before team-mate Dion Gowda went 0.006 seconds faster than him. A few minutes later Hitech’s Gabriel Stilp moved closer to breaking the 45s barrier, setting a 45.158s and then a 45.089s.

But it was not until over an hour after that someone eventually did lap sub-45s, with Sharp posting a 44.942s. The lap after was a 44.754s, and that proved unbeatable over the remaining two hours of the session.

Double R Racing’s Freddie Slater got closest to Sharp’s pace, lapping just 0.08s slower than him, and and Gowda also lapped sub-45s. Argenti Motorsport’s Patrick Heuzenroeder racked up the most laps, 118 in total, and the top 15 were covered by a remarkable 0.474s on pace.

On a gripped up track the starting pace in the afternoon session was faster than in the morning, with Slater setting an early 48.399s benchmark.

German shifter karter Maxhim Rehm, driving for JHR, then lowered the pace to 46.085s, but only spent a few minutes on top before Hitech’s Kanato Le went almost half a second faster. He kept on improving until setting a 45.277s.

Most of the track action was in the first 40 minutes of the session, with Sharp and then Fortec’s Mika Abrahams going to the top after Le. However he then returned to first place with the session’s first sub-45s lap, a 44.990s.

By the end of the afternoon, there had only been an improvement of 0.052s on that, with Sharp going fastest by 0.026s over Slater. Neither beat their morning bests, with Le in fourth place overall the highest place driver to set their fastest lap in the afternoon.

Test results