The Richardson Racing team battled hard on track for little reward as the F4 British Championship certified by FIA, powered by Ford EcoBoost made the trip to Oulton Park for the fourth round of the campaign.
The Corby-based team went into the weekend looking to try and push towards the top ten after a tough outing at Brands Hatch prior to a short early season break in the highly competitive single-seater series.
With the Ginetta Junior Championship having not competed at Oulton Park last season, driver Georgi Dimitrov was making his debut at the venue and his preparations weren’t helped by a number of red flags during Friday testing that limited his on-track running.
Despite that, Georgi still showed encouraging pace to finish little more than a second off the fastest lap, and he then qualified 13th for the opening race in a tricky qualifying session held in damp but drying conditions.
An impressive start when the lights went out on race one saw Georgi rocket up into ninth on the opening lap but he would struggle with the balance of the car as the laps ticked down and would find himself shuffled back to 15th place at the finish.
From seventh on the reverse grid for race two, Georgi would again run inside the top ten in the early stages before being overhauled by a number of quicker cars behind, leaving him to take the flag in 14th.
Georgi’s second quickest time in qualifying put him ninth on the grid for race three, and once again he got way well off the line to retain his place inside the top ten.
However, contact during the race would ultimately force Georgi to return to the pits and retire the car, preventing him from making the most of what had been solid race pace to that point.
“This was my first time at Oulton Park and we missed out on valuable track time with red flags in practice, which didn’t help me going into qualifying,” he said.
“This is a tricky circuit when you haven’t been here before and I think we struggled a bit to really find the right balance in the car. My starts were pretty good across the board but it was tough to really take full advantage of that, and it was unfortunate that the weekend ended with the retirement in race three.
“I know that this is a learning year for me in single-seaters, and hopefully at Knockhill we can have a bit more luck on our side and fight for some stronger results.”