FLORESCU STRENGTHS F4 BRITISH POINTS LEAD WITH KNOCKHILL WIN

Florescu (#10) held off his pursuers to claim victory at the tricky Scottish circuit – Photo: Jakob Ebrey

Petru Florescu put in a textbook performance at Knockhill to claim his sixth victory of the season and extend his championship lead in round 19 of the F4 British Championship certified by FIA – powered by Ford.

Not for the first time this year the Carlin driver put in a flawless drive from pole. He controlled the race, looking after his tyres and expertly dealt with the pressure of two safety car restarts; slowing the pack right down at the apex of the final corner and flooring the throttle to get the jump on his pursuers.

Said race winner Florescu: “I was able to handle the safety car restarts well and I planned how I would attack them in my mind. I’m also happy for my team-mate Devlin [DeFrancesco] who came third.

“The race was a normal flag to flag race for me. It was pretty straightforward. It feels really good to extend the championship lead and I hope to do well for the rest of the weekend.”

Fortec Motorsports’ Alex Quinn chased the Romanian home, making a welcome return to the podium and ending Nicolai Kjaergaard’s run of consecutive Rookie class wins. His team-mate finding himself under attack for much of the race as title contenders DeFrancesco, Leeds, Pull and Fewtrell fought their way through the field having been caught out by the drying conditions in qualifying.

DeFrancesco was particularly impressive, overtaking both Goddard and Kjaergaard in one corner after the first safety car restart. He then set about hounding Quinn for second place in the latter stages.

However, Quinn was inch perfect in his defence to keep the Canadian at bay in an extremely tense final few laps for the Racing Steps Foundation backed youngster.

Explained Quinn: “It was really difficult to defend and attack at the same time, but I managed to pull it off. I worked out where Devlin was quick and that made me more relaxed because I knew where on the circuit I had to really push.

“Starting on pole tomorrow [in race three] means we have a good chance to win and hopefully we can do that. I’m looking forward to it. We’ve shown today that we are really quick.”

Added DeFrancesco: “It was a very hectic race. I made a mistake at the start which is unusual for me so we need to analyse that, but we had great pace. The car was fantastic.

“We were really pressuring Quinn, but he did a great job to keep me behind. I think we had the pace for second, but it was great to come through from sixth after making the mistake at the start.

“I’m now second in the championship. It was a great job by the team and all my engineers.”

Alex Battipaglia