After a strong weekend at Oulton Park a few weeks ago, Devlin DeFrancesco continued his run of good form by topping the Friday practice combined times, setting a lap of 1min 20.753 seconds around Croft.
While DeFrancesco may have been the story of the F4 British Championship‘s afternoon session, the morning was dominated by Zane Goddard. The Double R Racing driver continued his impressive one lap pace, becoming the first competitor to dip into the 1min 20 second range. He soon became the driver to beat with the Carlins only able to slightly close the gap at the end.
James Pull ended the morning session as second fastest overall, just 0.074 seconds off the Australian’s time. Goddard had impressed in a Croft test earlier this season and continued his run, despite setting a majority of his laps on old tyres.
DeFrancesco, who’d finished the morning test in third, was determined to make an impression, going top of the afternoon leaderboard with a few minutes to go. The Canadian had recently dived into the pits and used the fresh rubber to pull out a gap of two tenths to Goddard, who failed to improve his time in the afternoon.
In the overall leaderboard, the #1 Carlin took top honours pushing Goddard into second, while Pull collected third despite a torrid afternoon. Both Luis Leeds and rookie Alex Quinn impressed towards the end, jumping up to fourth and fifth in the overall standings, however Leeds’ time was still three tenths off DeFrancesco.
Championship leader Petru Florescu ended Friday only ninth, finishing as the lowest of all the Carlin drivers.
“The team has done a great job. I’m really looking forward to the rest of this weekend” said DeFrancesco. “There is a lot more to come. There are a few little bits to refine here and there, but we’re in good shape for qualifying.
“It would be nice to make it two pole positions in a row. I really like this circuit. It’s one of my favourites. It’s a real driver’s circuit. I would like to think it’s an ideal circuit for me.”
