Photo credit to; British F4
Dries Van Lagendonck headed into the final British F4 race of the weekend knowing that if he wins from pole and Lewis Wherrell – who lines up alongside the Belgian – finishes 4th, he’d win the title a round early.
The red flag flew instantly after F1 academy driver Chiara Bättig stalled her Red Bull sponsored car from 7th on the grid and was unfortunately struck by Cameron Nelson, with debris instantly scattering across the circuit with many drivers taking avoiding action, thankfully both drivers were able to get out of their cars under their own strength and appeared to be uninjured.
The #83 car didn’t make the initial start with a engine issue, but with this red flag saw the possibility to make the restart, with the team franticly working to get the car repaired in time, which they unfortunately failed to do. To add further delays to the start of this race, they #40 car of Piotr Orzechowski didn’t move off the grid for the green flag laps, but was removed from the grid very quickly.
As the race got underway for the 2nd time Lagendonck held the lead as Wherrell dropped to 3rd position, losing a position to Palmer, before quickly jumping back up to 2nd. Slater and Charlie Smith almost had a huge coming together on the exit of Brooklands after Slater had a huge snap to the right on the exit, but both cars luckily didn’t come together. With just under 20 minutes to go Lagendonck came under major pressure from championship rival Wherrell as he closed in to attempt to make a crucial move for the championship battle, but didn’t get the move. George Proudford-Nalder and Cole Hewetson came together after some close battling through-out the lap at Luffield with Proudford-Nalder taking off his front wing and effectively ending his race early. Justin Di Lucia had to box with just under 15 minutes to go for front wing repairs after receiving the meatball flag – black flag with an orange circle, which signals that your car is to damaged to continue and you need to enter the pit lane within 3 laps to conduct repairs.
With 5 minutes to go the #12 car of Sadiq had a extremely scary moment into Copse with his rear wing panel flying off as he turned into the entry, with the meatball flag being deployed to get the #12 car into the pitlane.
Lagendonck would win with Wherrell in 2nd while the following cars received track limit’s penalties; 33, 73, 96, 71, 96 and 33. As a result the title will go down to the wire at Brands Hatch in 2 weeks times, in a weekend you simply cannot miss!