Only one team was capable of victory at Oulton Park in the BRDC Formula 4 Championship, Lanan Racing. The defending champion team got all three drivers to the finish line first over the course of the weekend, rounding out the Friday/Saturday race meeting with a win for Struan Moore. The podium topping result is Moore’s first in the 2014 championship.
Twelve laps of action on a drying race track started with Moore getting the jump on his team mate and race 1 winner George Russell. Russell bogged down enough at the start he came under threat from HHC Motorsport’s Raoul Hyman. The pressure from third became too much to bear and the resulting collision put both drivers out of the action.
Despite the elimination of his two main rivals Moore didn’t have it all his own way. Instead of the five and almost ten second margins of the previous two races Chris Middlehurst managed to keep the Lanan Racing driver to a 1.085 second margin. That gap could have been smaller but for a strong challenge for second from HHC Motorsport’s Will Palmer. Palmer held on to third until the end of the race.
Sennan Fielding finished fourth to keep his title hopes alive into the second half of the season in the second and final HHC run classifying car. Tom Jackson for Chris Dittmann Racing took fifth ahead of yet another strong showing from the Petroball Racing entry of Gaetano di Mauro. Jordan Albert finished first of the Sean Walkinshaw Racing entered runners with team mate Diego Borelli a lap down in eighth.
MGR Motorsport’s Michael Claessens took ninth place to round out the classifiers.
It was a dirty race, with retirements outnumbering the finishers over the eleven lap distance. Rahul Raj Mayer was a notable DNF thanks to a clash with Claessens late in the race after his wet tyres started to go off on a drying track. Arjun Maini also failed to make the finish along with Gustavo Lima, Diego Menchaca and both his Douglas Motorsport team mates, Charlie Eastwood and Rodrigo Fonseca.
Moore kept his nose clean for the win saying after the race, “It was all kicking off behind me and there were so many yellow flag areas that I had to control. It was just a case of finding the grip because some corners were wetter than others and on the first lap I had to try and find where was dry and where the grip was. Once I was comfortable I was able to pull out a gap, maintain it and get the job done. Hopefully this is the first of many more wins this year!”
