Richardson Racing brings curtain down on 2016 at Brands Hatch

The Richardson Racing team brought the curtain down on its 2016 racing programme with three solid finishes as the F4 British Championship certified by FIA – powered by Ford headed to Brands Hatch for the final round of the year.The Corby-based team, which has also competed in the Ginetta GT5 Challenge this season, went into the season finale with Andrew Richardson once again at the wheel, with the 25-year-old having returned to single-seater action in the penultimate meeting of the year at Silverstone.Qualifying 15th on the grid in challenging weather conditions around the famous Grand Prix layout of the Kent circuit, Andrew would go on to secure a hat-trick of 15th place finishes across the three races, once again showing encouraging speed behind the wheel considering his lack of track time with the Ford Eco-boost powered car.Indeed, his quickest race lap of the weekend in race two was little more than a second away from the eventual winner.The highlight of the weekend came in the final race live on ITV4 where Andrew found himself embroiled in a three-way battle for position with rivals Jack Martin and Jack Butel, with an impressive move on Martin at Westfield drawing widespread praise.“I feel I’ve done a good job behind the wheel this weekend but the simple fact is that I just need more time in the car if I’m going to get the most out of it,” Andrew said. “The rest of the grid has a full season of racing behind them whereas I have one weekend, so with that in mind, to be as close to the pace as we were around a technical circuit like Brands GP was really encouraging.“Having spent the past two years engineering the car, these two weekends have certainly been beneficial in terms of gaining an alternative insight into the car and how it behaves on track. That is something that can now look to make use of during the winter as we prepare for 2017.”With the half-season F4 programme now at an end, team boss Gwyn Richardson revealed that work was already well underway on plans for next season, with the team hoping to expand to run multiple cars – including a possible entry into the new Challenge Cup, which will run at selected events across the year.“It was important for us to be out on track in the second half of the year and it was unfortunate that we had to amend the plans that we had,” he said. “Andrew has come in for the final two rounds and done a good job considering he has had no testing time, and now we can turn our focus to 2017.“Whilst this season has been tough in terms of racing, it’s probably been our busiest in terms of testing potential drivers as we have had a lot of interest from people who are considering British F4 for next year.“We are certainly confident of being able to run a multi-car programme next year and welcome the introduction of the new Challenge Cup as an initiative for those drivers who might not be able to fully commit to a ten round programme.”


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