McLaren’s latest star shines bright on British F4 debut at Donington Park

As mid-season car racing debuts go, few have been as impressive as Dries Van Langendonck’s British Formula 4 bow at Donington Park last weekend. It seems McLaren has another star on its hands as the Belgian celebrated his 15th birthday by immediately qualifying on pole and left Leicestershire as the category’s youngest-ever winner.

Van Langendonck may have enjoyed a glittering karting career and benefited from McLaren’s support, but it was still quite something for him to mark his debut with a pole. However, his weekend threatened to unravel from there as he failed to take advantage of his front-row start in the opener when he struggled to get off the line.

A different remarkable story unfolded instead. Tommy Harfield charged into the lead at the start and resisted close attention from Martin Molnar to land his maiden win and the first in the series for his Chris Dittmann Racing squad. It was a triumph that means all eight teams on the grid have now been victorious this season. Behind Harfield, Molnar lost out to his title rival Fionn McLaughlin late on when the Irishman brilliantly dived down the inside of the Melbourne Hairpin.

Van Langendonck put his race-one disappointment behind him to progress from 12th to ninth in the reversed-grid bout and he then ended the weekend with a win. He did lose out to Harfield and Molnar at the start but a very clumsy lunge from miles back at the Melbourne Hairpin resulted in Virtuosi driver Molnar clattering into the earlier winner and Van Langendonck picked up the pieces.

“I learned from race one and applied it in race two and half applied it in race three!” said Rodin’s victor of his slightly sluggish launch. “I’m still learning.”

Van Langendonck admitted that his pre-weekend target was to merely land a top five and he therefore massively exceeded his expectations.

The same could not be said of the title protagonists as McLaughlin battled to fifth in race three with damage while he was also lured into a foolish hairpin move in race two and succeeded only in spinning Henry Joslyn. He still has a 45.5-point advantage in the standings but admitted he needed to stop making errors that have “made my life hard”.

Jimmy Piszcyk jumped into the lead at the start of that second race and headed home Adam Al Azhari for a Rodin 1-2, but it was their new team-mate who was making all the headlines.

Breath-taking Martin move enables him to extend Porsche advantage

A sensational double overtake in the second Donington Park race has enabled Will Martin to fractionally extend his Porsche Carrera Cup GB lead over Andrew Rackstraw to eight points.

The pair had spent the first few laps squabbling over third place, Rackstraw guiding his Century Motorsport Porsche ahead of Martin’s Eden Motorsport example around the outside of Goddards on lap two. But Martin retaliated a few tours later after getting a good run through Redgate and down the Craner Curves.

Up ahead, reigning champion George Gamble had been heavily defending from Sid Smith and soon Martin was on their tails. Martin sensed an opportunity to pounce through the Craner Curves when a Redgate move from Smith delayed the lead pair. A subsequent safety car with Angus Whiteside stopped on track broke up the battle and Martin was untroubled thereafter.

“It was a hectic race – I almost got shuffled down to fifth at one point,” he said. “I saw they were all defending quite heavily and you’ve got to take advantage.”

Rackstraw had earlier prevailed in the opener after getting the jump on polesitter Martin off the line. “It was all about the start,” said the South African. “Round here, these cars are so hard to overtake and all the drivers are experienced and can make them so wide. It’s probably the only race in my life where everything went to plan!” But then finishing fourth in race two with Martin triumphant was not quite part of the script.

Track-limits mess leads to the unlikeliest of Mini winners

Richardson took the chequered flag last but bizarrely ended up as the winner of second Mini race

Photo by: JEP

Perhaps it was a sign. The Donington Park Mini Challenge Trophy event began with a series of hearings on Friday into incidents at the previous Croft round. And penalties ended up overshadowing the Leicestershire weekend as well.

Track-limits abuses were the source of contention and blighted the whole event. That qualifying had to be red-flagged mid-way through to give officials chance to catch up on the glut of lap times that needed deleting was perhaps another sign.

But it was race two that was the nadir. Of the 13 finishers, 12 were sanctioned post-race for exceeding the circuit boundaries, with many of the frontrunners receiving 30-second penalties. The only unpunished competitor, Murray Richardson – who was last to take the chequered flag on the track – emerged as the unlikeliest of winners.

The series’ form driver Olivier Algieri had charged from 10th to first on the road before the result was ripped up, but got to keep his victories in the other two bouts. The Westbourne driver and fellow front-row starter Cam Richardson (Murray’s older brother) were comfortably clear of a great scrap for third in the finale that was eventually headed by Rhys Hurd in a race where, reassuringly, the final result better resembled what happened on track.

Algieri was again the class of the Cooper competitors, winning all three contests on the road

Photo by: JEP