After two years out, Richardson Racing‘s driver-engineer Andy Richardson returned to single-seaters. The 25-year-old has spent the year racing in Ginetta GT5 Challenge, but was called up to race at the last-minute.
With regular driver Alexandra Marinescu unable to race this weekend, Richardson took over, putting in his first F4 British Championship laps on Friday. After some testing he was soon back on the pace of the field, picking up a solid qualifying time.
“Having spent nearly two seasons engineering the car, it was interesting to have the chance to actually get behind the wheel and race it myself,” Richardson commented.
“Given that I hadn’t driven the F4 car before Friday testing, I had no real expectations in terms of results and just wanted to go out there and enjoy myself, so to get as close to the pace as I did in the second race is something I’m really happy with considering everyone else on the grid has been racing the car all year.”
He finished his first race of the weekend in eighteenth, jumping up a place to finish race two in seventeenth. The team tried a different approach for race three, though a penalty for track limits saw him finish a distant nineteenth.
“It didn’t take long to get comfortable behind the wheel but the F4 car certainly needs you to take a different approach compared to the cars I’ve driven in the past. You really need to be smooth in how you drive, and it’s all about carrying the momentum through the corners to maximise the lap time.”
The Richardson Racing team got some valuable running in before the final round of the season as they mostly look forward to opportunities in 2017.
“Getting a fresh insight into things has been really interesting and if the opportunity arose, it would be good to have another outing in the car to see what progress I can make.”