Welsh rising star Ella Lloyd left the fastest circuit in Britain with valuable additions to her Wera Tools F4 British Championship certified by FIA points account, but was further encouraged by her performance across a weekend where the weather played its part to the full.
Having been frustrated by incidents not of her making in the previous round at Snetterton, Lloyd was determined to take as much from the annual visit to Thruxton in support of the British Touring Car Championship as possible, and began strongly by posting the sixth-fastest time in qualifying, despite the track conditions being far from easy.
“I think, with the tricky conditions, we didn’t do too badly,” the 19-year-old said with a degree of understatement. “It was pretty wet at the start and, obviously, the more laps you did, the more the track dried out, so I think we did a pretty good job to get our best qualifying position of the year in this series.”
With a packed weekend schedule, the British F4 field faced two races on Saturday before the third and final encounter on Sunday morning, and the unpredictable weather continued to be an issue with multiple red flags and a late safety car period leaving very little time for any actual racing in the opening event. Unfortunately for Lloyd, who had gained several positions from 12th on the grid in the opening couple of laps, her race was over before the first stoppage. Again, as she had been at Snetterton, the Rodin Motorsport driver was the victim of someone else’s accident as August Raber spun at the first chicane, collected the #20 machine and eliminated both.
Delays caused by the persistent wet weather meant the second F4 race — already scheduled as the last of the day — started later than expected and required the field to run behind the safety car before being unleashed. With the top-12 in qualifying having been reversed on the grid, Lloyd lined up seventh but with the conditions making each lap something of a lottery, found herself having to defend heavily throughout.
“There wasn’t much I could do to avoid the incident in race one,” Lloyd recalled. “The opening laps were pretty good but then there was an incident ahead of me and, although I tried to take avoiding action, their car rolled back in front of me and that was that.
“Race two was tricky with the wet track and bad visibility, but I also struggled with the car a little bit. It had too much understeer for my liking and I was having to defend quite a lot, but the result, P11, wasn’t too bad considering all of that.”
With warm Sunday sunshine replacing the Saturday showers, conditions were better for everyone in race three, and Lloyd made the most of her advanced starting position by challenging for a potential podium place on the opening lap. The jostling pack, however, ensured that the bid for glory was short-lived and, having been shuffled back a few spots, the Rodin driver set about consolidating her pursuit of points.
Finding herself in the middle of a scrap for sixth place, Lloyd had to weigh up the opportunity to regain places against the need to defend from the likes of 2025 racewinners Fionn McLaughlin, Ethan Jeff-Hall and Rodin team-mate James Piszcyk, but eventually crossed the line in a hard-earned seventh position.
“I made a really good start and was challenging for third or fourth on the opening lap, but got pushed wide as everyone stacked up on the inside,” Lloyd recounted. “Having got off the line so well, I just thought I’d go for it around the outside, but it didn’t really work out and cost me a couple of places. After that, however, I had good battles throughout the race, even though the pace of the car probably wasn’t quite where we needed it to be, so to be able to hold off the drivers behind me was pretty good. But it was a promising result — and a promising weekend overall, I think.”
The Thruxton event kicked off a busy few weeks for Lloyd, who will be back in action for round four of the F1 Academy series at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal this weekend (14-15th June), before immediately resuming her British F4 campaign at Oulton Park in Cheshire on her return from Canada.
