Arjun Maini has claimed his maiden BRDC Formula 4 Championship race win in the second race at Snetterton on the 300 circuit. The Lanan Racing driver was never headed in the nine lap clash which was run to time rather than the ten lap maximum distance, making Lanan Racing the only team on the grid to have F4 race winners in every car. Douglas Motorsport’s Diego Menchaca took second in the contest, but was never truly in a position to challenge for his second F4 race win.
Maini started from the pole, claimed by finishing eighth in the first race of the weekend, before setting off to build a lead. What lead he could produce was wiped away however when Nicolas Beer for Sean Walkinshaw Racing and Sennan Fielding for HHC Motorsport clashed at Brundle on the opening lap, prompting a safety car. Four of the nine laps were run under caution which left Maini only four tours of the circuit to re-build an advantage over Menchaca.
When the safety car returned to pit lane Arjun shot off, putting 3.171 seconds between his #36 machine and the #68 of the Mexican. George Russell added assistance from behind in the dying laps as Menchaca was forced to honour a threat from the rear. The second Lanan car took 1.5 seconds out of the Douglas machine in the final lap alone.
Raoul Hyman made up four places to take fourth in the second clash in his HHC run machine, finishing ahead of the Hillspeed entered car of Gustavo Lima and his race 1 winning team mate Will Palmer. Struan Moore and Rahul Raj Mayer took seventh and eighth respectively for Lanan and Hillspeed. Rodrigo Fonseca for Douglas and Jordan Albert in the first of the SWR machines rounded out the top ten.
Petroball Racing showed good form with their two debut drivers in the team’s debut year. Gaetano di Mauro and Dan Roeper took 11th and 12th ahead of Chris Dittmann Racing’s Tom Jackson. Diego Borelli took 14th for SWR while Charlie Eastwood for Douglas finished in last place after a slow getaway from the start.
For MGR Motorsport it was a race to forget. Michael Claessens managed to classify fifteenth, beating only the car which started very late indeed. For David Wagner retirement came on lap six, around the time the damages from the first lap accident finally halted Sennan Fielding’s car. Chris Middlehurst failed even to start.
The final race of the weekend gets underway this afternoon at 15:35 where Will Palmer will start from the pole with Hyman alongside.