Arjun Maini has taken the victory in the final BRDC Formula 4 Championship race win of the weekend at Brands Hatch. The Lanan Racing driver featured at the head of both preceding races but was unable to convert either strong performance into a top step visit for the team until his lights to flag triumph on Sunday afternoon. Maini started on pole care of a lap time 0.008 seconds faster than race 1 winner Gaetano di Mauro from Petroball Racing during the first outing of the weekend.
di Mauro continued to feature too, hounding the leading Lanan machine from the start through to Maini’s slim victory. Never did the gap extend past 0.8 seconds and the margin at the line was only 0.720 but while he couldn’t dominate the race Maini always had the answer to di Mauro’s tough questions.
Struan Moore took his second podium finish of the weekend with another third place for Lanan Racing.
HHC Motorsport narrowly missed out on a podium thanks to Sennan Fielding who trumped the best that championship leader George Russell could produce. Still fifth place for the third and final Lanan driver managed to extend his title lead to nine points over Raoul Hyman who placed outside the top ten. Russell’s points lead had dropped to just one point following a qualifying smash and a sub-par first race of the weekend.
Rodrigo Fonseca took sixth place for Douglas Motorsport ahead of Jordan Albert for SWR – Caterham F1. The newly appointed F1 junior team leave the circuit celebrating Albert’s best ever F4 weekend when the seventh is added to two fifth places previously scored. He fought a duel with the second Douglas Motorsport entry of Charlie Eastwood, the pair finished less than three tenths apart at the end of the 14 lap contest with race 2 winner Chris Middlehurst in ninth place.
Tom Jackson took the final top ten spot for Chris Dittmann Racing, only fifteen seconds off the lead. The top five places were covered by less than 2.5 seconds.
Hyman meanwhile lost out to Hillspeed’s Rahul Raj Mayer with Diego Menchaca for Douglas in thirteenth. Diego Borelli for SWR – Caterham F1 and Tom Bale for CDR took fourteenth and fifteenth ahead of Alfredo Zabalza and Meridian Motorpsort’s duo of Connor Jupp and Jai Nijjar. MGR’s Michael Claessens rounded out the classified runners in nineteenth.
Gustavo Lima for Hillspeed and Will Palmer for HHC both made it into the retirement pile, pulling up on lap thirteen of fourteen.
“It’s been a great weekend for us with third, second and now a win, and I’m really happy to get the win after the mistake in race two, “ said Maini.
“It was an intense race as Gaetano applied a lot of pressure, and I couldn’t afford to back off. I managed to get a small gap and every time Gaetano got close to me I was able to slightly stretch the lead.
“I’ve made a big jump in the championship this weekend, and hopefully we can keep this form up at the final two rounds.”
Heading into the final two meetings of the season, the BRDC Formula 4 Championship is headed by George Russell though a consistent podium scoring ability at Brands hatch put him in second place over Raoul Hyman. The two Lanan drivers head Raoul Hyman, with sixteen points covering the top three places. Sennan Fielding for HHC and Will Palmer form outside hopes at the title. The championship gets underway for its penultimate meeting of the year at Donington Park in mid-September.
