Louis Sharp’s 2023 British F4 season got underway in tremendous fashion as he took the lead of the championship from the off with a stunning reverse-grid win from last in the wet on the opening weekend. That lead has disappeared for the first time this season, however: Will Macintyre has taken the top spot after 14 races led by Sharp. Despite losing the championship lead, the young Kiwi is confident he can come back strong after the summer break.

By Gerren Scapens

Whilst Sharp still came away from the famous Silverstone grand prix circuit with a podium in the reverse-grid race, that was not enough to retain control of his title charge.

Even with this being the longest track on the calendar, the 16-year-old only found himself 0.365 seconds off Jimmy Piszcyk’s pole time. Despite the small gap, Sharp qualified 12th – highlighting just how tight the field is. The Kiwi felt good after the weekend, but he knew that his qualifying needed to improve for him to retake the top spot after the summer break.

“I’m feeling good,” Sharp told Feeder Series at Silverstone. “Obviously we had the championship lead going into this round, but unfortunately qualifying just didn’t really go our way. So I made it really hard for myself really. We were starting a lot further back than I think we should have been.

“So it was going to be tough to have a good weekend, but we still came away with a podium, so I can’t complain too much. We do have a bit of points to make up now, so we really have to work hard in the off-season to try and make up that deficit.”

Consistency is key

Consistency is key to this year’s British F4 championship. Macintyre has only had one win, fewer than the rest of the top five, yet leads the standings. To top it off, Macintyre’s team Hitech Pulse-Eight ended the Silverstone weekend by locking out the podium.

What might have not given Rodin Carlin the edge is that other teams had tested at Silverstone in the run-up to the event. This being said, the Kiwi believes that it has been just a closely fought battle between all drivers – not that they are lacking pace themselves.

“It’s been tough. It’s been quite up and down. We’ve seen how competitive all the drivers are, so it’s really hard to get wins and especially podiums. I feel like I’ve been quite consistent, obviously, until this weekend, so I need to gain some of that consistency back.

“The most important thing is we need to work on qualifying. We’re not qualifying where we should be. Our pace is always stronger than where we qualify, unfortunately.

“There’s a bit of work we need to do. But if we can sort that out, I think the last half of the season should be quite good.”

The championship now heads into a summer break that lasts until 29–30 July at Croft. The long break is not something Sharp is particularly looking forward to, as he aims to demolish the 28-point gap that he has to the top of the standings.

“Yeah, I’m definitely going to miss driving. Five weeks is too long. It would be nice to have a bit of a break, but I’m going to get pretty bored,” he says. “I’ve just got to use this time to really work hard on myself and work hard with the team to try and come back strong.”

Header photo credit: Rodin Carlin