Round five of the F1 Academy has been a long time coming for Ella Lloyd, but she maintained her recent run of form with a brace of fourth-places finishes at Zandvoort in the Netherlands.
The Welsh McLaren protege went into the series’ summer hiatus revelling in a hat-trick of second places from Montreal and, in the intervening weeks, posted a run of point-scoring results in the British F4 championship — including a return to the podium at the very circuit where her Academy schedule would resume. The weekend’s two practice sessions saw Lloyd reacquaint herself with a circuit that would prove tricky for the world’s best in F1 across the weekend, a task exacerbated by some typically unpredictable seaside weather, and moving up the timesheets each time out as she honed her #20 Rodin Motorsport entry ahead of qualifying.
Having already taken a brief turn at the top of the times early in the lone qualifying session, when wet tyres were the order of the day, Lloyd made regular returns as the track dried out and running on slicks became possible. However, the constant evolution of the road surface made predicting the polesitter something of a lottery as each successive car across the line seemed to improvement the benchmark. Eventually, with all the cars back in the pits, Lloyd emerged in third place, improving her chances of securing further podium finishes on raceday.
“We had decent pace in qualifying, and I was pretty happy with how things went given the tricky conditions,” Lloyd commented. “It made things harder going from the wets to the slicks, but I put a good lap time in and was happy to be just a tenth away from pole position.”
Saturday’s race, with the top eight qualifiers reversed on the grid, saw Lloyd start from the outside of row three, but almost immediately making up a position to run in the top five through the early laps. Fifth became third almost as soon as the first safety car of the weekend was withdrawn, with the papaya-coloured #20 surged past standings leader Doriane Pin, but Lloyd soon found home favourite Maya Weug back on her tail and hungry for success in front of the Dutch crowd. Although the Welsh driver wasn’t about to make it easy for her rival, going wheel-to-wheel with Weug to start lap nine, there was nothing she could to prevent the pass — and Lloyd’s battle wasn’t over as the duel allowed fifth place to home in on the McLaren-backed car. Minor contact ensued in a vain passing attempt, but Lloyd was able to continue, eventually taking fourth place by half a second.
“We made good progress, had a good start and made up a few positions, but then struggled a little bit with the pace of the car as the race wore on,” she explained. “However, I was able to hold my position and finish in P4, which wasn’t too bad.”
Race two, opening Sunday following morning as precursor to the Dutch Grand Prix, began with a lightning start by Lloyd, quick enough to launch her past fellow Briton Alisha Palmowski, who had started on the outside of the front row. Ever the opportunist, Lloyd then challenged polesitter Weug for the lead, but was rebuffed, forcing her to turn her attention to defending second place. Just as she appeared to have settled into her task, however, Lloyd was hit with the news that she had marginally jumped the start — ironically, just as she had in the British F4 round at Zandvoort — and would have to open up a gap of five seconds to retain her place at the chequered flag. Although she managed to put space between herself and the chasing pack, there were too few laps remaining to extend the cushion far enough and Lloyd would be demoted to fourth after the race had finished.
“Getting that five-second penalty wasn’t really ideal,” Lloyd said with understatement. “I didn’t think I gained an advantage as I only crept a little then stopped before getting going for real, so it’s unfortunate.
“We had much better pace in the second race, even if it wasn’t really quite enough to race for the win, but I was much happier with everything other than the start. Crossing the line in P2 was decent, even if it became P4 with the penalty, and we scored good points across the whole weekend. We still got some things to work on though in order to find some more pace for the next race in Singapore.”
With two rounds still to run, Lloyd sits a familiar fourth in the overall F1 Academy standings, with a good chance of being able to improve further when the series resumes in Singapore on the first weekend of October. Before then, however, the #20 will make its final British F4 appearance at the penultimate round of the season, at Silverstone, over the weekend of 20-21 September.
