BRDC Formula 4 2014 - Snetterton

27/10/2014

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Wisbech, Cambridgeshire teenager George Russell put the finishing touch to his BRDC Formula 4 championship title challenge with a measured and convincing win in the final race of the series at Snetterton, Norfolk on Sunday October 26th.

Stepping up from a glittering career in Karts, the sixteen year old Russell had laid the foundations for his Formula 4 campaign with a brace of wins in the opening F4 event in April on the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit. But having commanded the peak of the points table from that time until deep into the season, he surrendered the title race lead to his Lanan Racing team-mate Arjun Maini after the Indian racer scored recent wins at Brands Hatch and Donington Park. In the end, Russell had to hold his form and nerve and do it the hard way.

Entering the Snetterton weekend, he was trailing Maini by 21 points. Pole position for Saturday's Race 1 boded well, but surprisingly yielded no better than seventh place. The only upside was that Maini finished behind him in eighth place: the downside, was that the two other remaining drivers with a possible shot at the title – HHC Racing's Sennan Fielding and Raoul Hyman – both finished ahead of him; Fielding third and Hyman sixth. As a direct result of a damp track in qualifying which left teams torn between opting for slicks or wets, the weekend's opener had, in fact, produced a small ruffling in the established order – Russell's brilliant pole notwithstanding - with Mexico's Diego Menchaca mugging Russell at the start and winning for Douglas Motorsport from the front row, with team-mate Charlie Eastwood second and Fielding third.

Things got even more intriguing after Sunday morning's Race 2, the penultimate encounter of the series. From the reverse order grid from the top eight in Race 1, Hyman took the victory by 1.5 seconds over Russell, with Fielding third, Russell's Lanan Racing team-mate Struan Moore fourth and Maini, once again out of sorts, fifth. The stage was thus set for a properly theatrical final act.

The grid being set according to each driver's best lap time from Races 1 and 2, Russell was once again on pole alongside Hyman, with Fielding and Maini on the second row. With the four leading players - all with four race wins to their credit - in their places, any number of possible permutations would make one of them champion. But the received wisdom of gamblers – "the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.... but it's the only way to bet" – nevertheless held sway, and it suggested that it was going to be a close-run affair between Russell and Maini. Simply stated, if Maini finished in the top three, the title was his, no matter what. If Russell won, he would be champion only if Maini finished fourth or lower, so if there were no change from the starting order at the finish, Russell would be the victor by a single championship point.

Hyman it was who took the lead from the start, but Russell bided his time and passed the South African with a decisive move on the second lap. He then set about opening a secure gap which he maintained to the end, despite a late charge by Hyman who closed to within less than a second at the chequered flag. Starting behind Fielding and Maini, Charlie Eastwood immediately passed them both to install himself in a third place which he occupied until the end. This act alone probably cost him any place on Maini's Christmas card list, but in truth it was academic, because from the start, Maini was unable to make any telling impression on Fielding, and ultimately finished fifth nearly 6 seconds off the winner's time, and a mere three points behind Russell - 480 to 483 – to thoroughly merit the vice champion honours. Hyman and Fielding were even closer, separated in third and fourth championship positions by a single point - 464 to 465 – while Struan Moore's sixth place in the final race elevated him to fifth place with 412 points in the championship, the only other driver to exceed 400 points for the season.

Having started the season strongly and positioned himself as a serious contender for the title with a brace of victories at Snetterton in mid-year, Comma- sponsored Will Palmer's campaign rather came apart and was blighted in a second half which included four DNFs, the last of them in Saturday's race in which he started thirteenth but finished on the end of a tow rope after colliding with Jordan Albert on the second lap. The irony is that he had unofficially broken the Snetterton lap record two days before, becoming the first F4 driver to go below 1min 50secs for the Snetterton 300 circuit. Sixth place in the championship was nevertheless good reward for his debut season in single seaters, and he will undoubtedly be a serious contender for the title if he returns to the series in 2015.

Of the four other drivers to record race victories in 2014, Diego Menchaca finished seventh, Petroball Racing's Gaetano di Mauro from Brazil was eighth and Chris Middlehurst for Mark Godwin Racing, ninth. Although without a win, Charlie Eastwood was ever-more competitive in the second half of the season and completed the top ten. Gustavo Lima, who won at Brands Hatch in the season's second event was motoring along nicely but faded badly with a couple of DNFs before completely disappearing from the series with two events to go.

Russell takes the £25,000 champion's prize, another £1,000 for winning the Jack Cavill Pole Position Cup and, most valuable of all, a full official GP3 test with the Arden team in Abu Dhabi at the end of the Formula 1 season. If all that doesn't go to his head, he will no doubt acquit himself well and add still further to the burgeoning prestige of the Formula 4 championship when he joins fellow F4 competitor Sennan Fielding as a McLaren Autosport BRDC Awards finalist later this month.

Comma is Technical Partner to BRDC Formula 4, and in addition to sponsoring Will Palmer in the 24 race series, supplies Comma brand lubricants, coolants and maintenance chemicals to all teams competing in the championship. All rounds of the BRDC F4 Championship are broadcast free-to-air on ITV 4 in an hour-long standalone show screened one week after each of the eight events in a prime-time Sunday evening slot. Coverage on ITV4 also includes a further weekday evening repeat.

For full reports, championship details, driver interviews, news and inside information on the championship, teams and drivers, visit the excellent BRDC Formula 4 website at www.formula4.com