This weekend marked the start of Holly’s first season in single seaters where she is racing with her previous Ginetta Juniors team, Fox Motorsport.
Qualifying
After 2 days of testing on-site at Donington Park, Holly lined up for the first qualifying of the season on Saturday morning to make her debut in the GB4 Championship. With sunshine forecast throughout the weekend, qualifying was set to offer no surprises on the weather front, and Holly was calm while excited as she made her way over to the assembly area.
Despite a slower start to the 15-minute session, Holly pushed to the end to consistently improve her pace across all three sectors and found her fastest time in the final lap of qualifying. With her penultimate lap 1.914 seconds shy of the driver on pole, she started in 21st place in Race 1 later that afternoon where grid position is determined by the fastest qualifying lap.
Race 2 is determined by each driver’s second fastest qualifying lap while Race 3 features a reverse starting grid for positions 1-12. Holly maintained the P21 starting position across all three races.
Race 1
Race 1 kicked off at 5:30pm on Saturday and Holly approached the drive calmly, picking up the pace she was able to find at the back end of qualifying earlier that day. Early contact between Fortec Motorsport’s Jack Taylor and Elite’s Ary Bansall up front allowed her to gain 2 positions and finish in P19 – a solid and consistent performance for Holly to build on.
Race 2
Going in for the overtake on Lap 1 of Race 2 on cold tyres, Holly lost grip, spun and, whilst recovering, landed on the wet grass. She quickly pulled it back and began chasing the back of the pack to close the gap. With Bostandjiev and Hilton forced into the pits, she was able to regain two positions that way and get behind Fox Motorsport teammate, Caitlin McDaniel. In lap 10, Fortec Motorsport’s Thomas Ingram-Hill spun off and was left facing backwards, allowing Holly to gain another position as he fell back, ending her race in P22.
It was a solid drive after Lap 1 and Holly managed to get the gap to McDaniel down to 10 seconds from 45 seconds, recovering well. She’ll be taking home some learnings about tyre warming and grip which will prove invaluable to her in the coming races as she becomes more familiar with the car.
Race 3
Holly had a strong start to Race 3, moving ahead from P21 to P19 by Lap 3 of the race. She maintained this position throughout the race keeping Douglas Motorsport’s Dayton Coulthard at bay who was placed behind her after an early issue. After a collision between Magnussen and Pribyl towards the end of the race, Holly was promoted to P17 – her highest finishing position of the weekend.
Overall, it was a consistent weekend for Holly with plenty of learnings to take into her next testing session at Oulton Park next week and into the next round of GB4 at Silverstone at the end of the month.
