Jake Hughes has extended his lead at the top of the BRDC Formula 4 Championship standings to 34 points with a dominant third win of the season in the final race at Silverstone.
Hughes started the ten lap encounter from pole position, after setting the fastest lap from races one and two of the weekend. The poleman didn’t produce a great start though, with Matthew Graham jumping ahead to lead the field into Copse for the first time.
Seb Morris briefly got second from Hughes on lap three, however slight contact with the leader removed the Hillspeed driver’s nose cover and dropped him behind Hughes. Graham held the lead for a couple of laps until a spectacular move around the outside at Brooklands gave him the lead on lap three.
From then on, the Lanan Racing ace was untouchable, pulling away at around half a second a lap to claim victory by 6.8 seconds, in the process becoming the second driver after Matt Bell to record three race victories this season.
“I didn’t make the best of starts and Matthew [Graham] got the jump on me going into Copse,” said Hughes. “For the first two laps he was defending really well and I couldn’t get past him, and I felt it was always going to be an outside move somewhere. I managed to pull it off at Brooklands and then put my head down for a few laps and pulled out a gap.
“The times in this championship are very close and the drivers all race fair as well so it makes for great racing.”
With Morris struggling a bit with him front-end damage, Graham was able to enjoy a relatively comfortable run to second place. This result, combined with his win earlier in the weekend, has surged the 17 year old up to fourth in the championship standings.
Charlie Robertson sat fourth early on, however Jack Barlow found his way past on lap four, with the Sean Walkinshaw Racing ace leading a queue of cars behind the struggling Morris. Despite his best efforts though, Barlow was unable to find a way past, with Morris taking a hard-fought seventh podium finish of the season.
Barlow had to settle for fourth, with Robertson and his HHC Motorsport team-mate Raoul Hyman completing the top six. Struan Moore took a strong seventh from 11th on the grid, while race two winner Ross Gunn battled back after slipping to tenth at one stage to finish where he started in eighth, ahead of MGR Motorsport pairing Diego Menchaca and Pietro Fittipaldi.
Race two hero James Greenway had a frustrating race, the privateer running on the edge of the top six early on before dropping down the field, eventually finishing fourteenth. One place further back was championship contender Jake Dalton, the disappointing result, coupled with his retirement in the opening race, dropping the MGR Motorsport ace to fifth in the championship standings.
Also having a tougher weekend than he’d hoped was fellow championship front-runner Matt Bell, with a hard-fought twelfth place finish in the final race, added to ninth and fifteenth in the first two encounters, seeing him fall to eighth overall in the points.
The full championship standings can be found here: http://www.formula4.com/results/full-standings.aspx
2013 BRDC Formula 4 Championship Round eighteen result:
1. Jake Hughes, Lanan Racing, 10 laps
2. Matthew Graham, Sean Walkinshaw Racing, +6.839s
3. Seb Morris, Hillspeed, +14.343s
4. Jack Barlow, Sean Walkinshaw Racing, +14.841s
5. Charlie Robertson, HHC Motorsport, +15.877s
6. Raoul Hyman, HHC Motorsport, +17.167s
7. Struan Moore, Hillspeed, +18.231s
8. Ross Gunn, Motionsport, +18.653s
9. Diego Menchaca, MGR Motorsport, +22.772s
10. Pietro Fittipaldi, MGR Motorsport, +23.283s
