Linus Lundqvist suffers difficult start to F4 British Championship

Linus Lundqvist endured the worst possible start to his rookie campaign in the F4 British Championship, retiring from all of this weekend’s three season-opening races at Brands Hatch with technical problems.

Coming off the back of a strong pre-season period, 18-year-old Swede Lundqvist initially grabbed the headlines for all the right reasons as running got underway, topping Friday’s free practice sessions and taking fourth in Saturday morning qualifying.

With early signs of trouble surfacing in the grid-deciding session, however, fears that something might not be right were later confirmed in the opening race, with Lundqvist completing just a handful of laps before retiring his Double R Racing car with a loss of power. The issues then reappeared in both the second and third race, leaving Lundqvist again forced to retire and with zero points to his name from his maiden F4 weekend.

“The worst possible start to the season, unfortunately,” says Linus Lundqvist. “There’s not much more to say; it’s obviously a massive disappointment for all of us. It began in qualifying with the engine not pulling properly down the straights, and it just got worse and worse from there. I’m really sorry for the team as well – they were working flat out trying to solve the problem, but to no avail. It’s tough.”

Despite the setback, however, Lundqvist remains in good spirits about the rest of the campaign, which continues in just two weeks’ time at Donington Park.

“There aren’t a lot of positives to take away from here, but at least we proved in free practice that we’ve got the pace,” Lundqvist sums up. “To become a winner, you also need to tackle the difficulties, and what happened here this weekend will only spur me on even more. I’ll take things race by race now, and try to make the best of what we have. It’s still early days!”

The three races at Brands Hatch were won by sophomore British F4 racers Jamie Caroline (two wins) and Ayrton Simmons.