Last week at Brands Hatch the F4 British Championship certified by FIA – powered by Ford EcoBoost got under way with their annual media day held at Brands Hatch.
Aside from the media duties seeing the teams and drivers unveil their 2019 liveries, they managed to complete 1,604 laps – nearly 2,000 miles of running throughout the six and a half hours of track time throughout the day.
Championship returnee Josh Skelton topped the timesheets for the morning session in the JHR Developments car, using the experience he gained last year to finish 0.093 seconds ahead of Double R Racing‘s Sebastian Alvarez.
Rookie Cup contender Zane Maloney took the third fastest time of the day as he headed up the returning Carlin squad.
Alex Connor finished fourth for Arden, leading Ginetta graduates Louis Foster and Luke Browning.
Horsten puts Arden fastest in afternoon session
Credit: Jakob Ebrey Photography
Bart Horsten posted the fastest lap time in the afternoon session, lapping his Arden car around the Brands Hatch Indy circuit in 46.510 seconds, ahead of the top eight times split by less that two-tenths of a second.
Browing pushed on in the afternoon to go second fastest, just 0.020 seconds from the Australian. Skelton finished third ahead of Arden’s Tommy Foster and Alex Connor.
Alvarez and Maloney finished sixth and seventh, with Louis Foster, Fortec’s Roberto Faria and JHR’s Carter Williams rounding out the top ten.
The latest two entries to the series Fortec’s Mariano Martinez and Double R’s Reema Juffali ended the day slowest, but showed improvement over the course of the day.
“I’m really pleased with how the day went, having topped the times in the morning session we were looking good. The team at JHR were working well together and managed to find a good setup.” said Skelton.
“The afternoon session didn’t go as well as it could have with some mixed weather conditions, but we still showed good speed with used tyres. It’s a shame we didn’t manage to get a run on the new ones because I think we had a lot more time to come.
“On the whole, it was a great day with the quickest overall time and I’m confident heading into the first round. Thank you to the team – and my sponsors – for all their continued hard work and support.”
Bart Horsten added, “Overall, it was a good day. We made improvements from the morning session to the afternoon, I was consistently fast on each of my three runs and the guys at Arden Motorsport did a fantastic job to get me out on track at the right times.
“The lap times are so close around Brands Hatch because it’s such a short track. I think we’ll have to wait for Friday practice at the first event to get a proper reading on where the competition is at, but I’ve ended Media Day at the top of the timesheets with the car as it will be for the first race, so I’m pleased with that.
“I feel more confident now than I did going into this week, so I’ll take the positives forward from that and hopefully we can start the season on the front foot.”
With the first round at Brands Hatch just weeks away, it is expected that more announcements will be made soon regarding additional entries.
