Having finished on a high in testing at Croft last week, TRS Arden’s talented teenagers took to the track at Snetterton on 30th and 31st May for a further two days of official F4 British Championship certified by FIA – powered by Ford EcoBoost testing.
Ayrton Simmons got off to a flying start, setting the quickest time of the morning session on day one. His time of 1m 52.299s earning him second overall as Tuesday’s running came to a close. Oscar Piastri wasn’t far behind. He improved by almost half a second upon his morning’s best, setting a lap time of 1m 52.327s in the afternoon to put him just 0.028s shy of Ayrton and third overall. There was cause for further optimism with Oscar not putting all of his best sector times together when recording his fastest lap on new tyres which suggested he could have gone quicker.
Both Ayrton and Oscar continued their fine form on day two, netting second and third fastest overall once again with respective times of 1m 52.048s and 1m 52.054s. They rattled off successive personal best laps with less than one hour on the clock. It ultimately saw the team-mates separated by an even finer margin than they had been 24 hours earlier. A mere 0.006s and less than one tenth slower than Logan Sargeant’s late flyer which denied TRS Arden a one-two as the test came to its conclusion.
Like Ayrton, Alex Quinn’s best time on day one came in the morning. A lap of 1m 52.587s left him third on the timesheets heading into the lunchbreak. The Cornish racer had to settle for sixth overall when the chequered flag fell on each of the days’ running, despite being the early pacesetter in both afternoon sessions; recording his best lap time of 1m 52.496s late on Wednesday.
As had been the case at the Croft test, Olli Caldwell was the team’s marathon man. The 14-year-old achieved one of the highest lap counts of any driver during the entire test, 140 in total, and the most of the TRS Arden quartet. His fastest time came in the afternoon on Tuesday with a 1m 53.030s earning him 12th on the combined timesheet for the day. However, his best on Wednesday which was just four one thousandths of a second slower was enough to see him end day two inside the top 10 in ninth.
Attention now turns back to Croft Circuit which will host the next three rounds of the F4 British Championship on 10/11 June. Oscar, Alex and Ayrton sit second, sixth and eighth in the standings respectively and will aim to enhance their title prospects before the summer break. Meanwhile Olli will make his competitive British F4 debut, becoming the youngest driver to race in the series and begin his bid to win the Ford F4 Challenge Cup.
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