Ella Lloyd once again demonstrated her race craft and overtaking abilities in the F4 British Championship, as she raced at the UKs fastest circuit, Thruxton, at the weekend (June 7-9).
The Welsh youngster had plenty to do in the three 20-minute races, after a difficult qualifying session on Saturday morning left her down the order. She quickly made amends in the opening contest later that afternoon, marching forward seven places, before red flags halted proceedings.
With the positions then being rolled back to the previous lap, she lost some of those gains, but still held her own and was classified a solid 10th. It was a similar story for race two on Sunday lunchtime, as she made strong forward progress, but red flags were shown, and the grid set back to its original order.
On the second start, she closed in on a pair of cars battling through the chicane and slowing each other down, giving Ella nowhere to go. Smartly realising she had lost or damaged her front wing after making contact, she dove into the pits for a replacement, minimising any lost time. However, with only a short Safety Car period, she wasn’t able to catch the rest of the pack and challenge for further places.
The final contest of the weekend was pushed back until the end of the day, owing to timetable delays, and with time running out, it was held for a shortened 17 minutes, behind the Safety Car instead of a warm-up lap and standing start. With the pack stretched out, overtaking was difficult, and as a car stopped on track with a problem, the Safety Car returned, running to the flag with no further racing taking place.
Having demonstrated that she has the ability to overtake and make her way forwards on track, Ella now looks forward to a quick return to racing, as the F4 British Championship travels to Silverstone this weekend (June 14-16), on the full Grand Prix circuit.
Ella Lloyd commented:
G1 – 17, R1 – 10
G2 – 18, R2 – 17
G3 – 18, R3 – 15
Championship: 13 (23 points)
“I started quite far back for race one as I didn’t have the best qualifying, but I had a really good first two laps before the red flag. I was already up to P10, so my race craft stood out, which made a big difference, as if you can race you can get through the field quite quickly. When the red flag was shown the order went back a lap, so I restarted 11th, and I stayed around there for the rest of the race as it was a lot calmer than the first start.
“I had a really good start for race two, but when the red flags came out, they went back to the original starting positions so all the gains I made were lost. When we restarted, the cars in front were battling and had some contact at the chicane, and I ended up losing my front wing. I knew it had happened right away, so I shot straight into the pits to make sure I didn’t lose too much time, but we didn’t manage to catch the Safety Car train. We were only told on the grid for race three that it was going to be a Safety Car start and you can’t do too much when you’re all in a line. We only had six laps of racing and it ended behind the Safety Car, so there wasn’t much I could do.”
