ZAK O’SULLIVAN
Sixteen-year-old British F4 runner-up is all set for his next step in BRDC F3
This year I am stepping up to BRDC British Formula 3, still with the Carlin team that I finished a very close runner-up in British Formula 4 with last year, and preparations are going pretty well. The F3 car is a surprising step up pacewise. Adapting to the car was a bit tricky when I first started testing but we’ve made good progress. It turns out it’s slightly quicker than the Formula Alpine cars, after the new aero kit changes, which we were a bit shocked about, so it’s taken a bit of adaptation. Adapting to the aero in higher-speed corners hasn’t been so much of an issue, it’s more that the British F3 car’s got very effective yet quite odd braking capabilities.
I still don’t know how fast we’re going to be come the start of the season, which is later this month at the Brands Hatch British GT meeting. The best way to find out is after round one’s qualifying. There have been a few days where we’ve had a majority of the British F3 grid testing together. We look relatively fast but as I’ve seen in the past testing is really nothing to go by.
For assessing likely rivals, I’d mainly go team wise and then therefore look at the drivers in those cars. Hitech is of course a dominant force in junior single-seater racing and it finished second last year in its inaugural BRDC F3 season so I would expect it to make some gains over the winter and be quite a close threat. Arden also has joined BRDC F3 this year, it’s an established team so I would expect it to be up there pretty quickly as well.
Last year’s British F4 campaign was my first season in single-seaters. I went in with no particular aims and in the end I was just four points away from winning the title. My approach seemed to work relatively well, so the same approach will be applied again in BRDC F3 this year.
There’s slightly less learning to do now I’ve done a season in single-seaters, but there’s still some work. So early on for me it’s just about settling into the championship with no real expectations or hopes. Then you can make any judgements after the first couple of rounds and goals can be set.
Last year’s F4 title finale at Brands was dramatic: I missed out when the final race was stopped early for rain and half points were awarded. I think the term is ‘it is what it is’! It’s gone now, one of those things, Mother Nature didn’t like me that afternoon! The rain came at an awkward time, equally I made a little mistake in race two so I put myself on the back foot slightly.
The title was there to win but I’m not too fussed really, finishing second isn’t the biggest disaster, as long as I was up there and could prove my worth throughout the year that was good. And from the end of the weekend, on Monday morning I was at Carlin doing a seat fit for some simulator stuff for F3, so it was ‘forget about that, switch on to the next step and start planning for F3’!
Even though I’m staying with Carlin this year there’s no overlapping personnel between the two years, apart from my engineer Anthony Grenier who I’m taking with me from F4 to F3. We gelled well last year, he’s done a year or two in F3 before, and it’s always good to keep some of the same faces around you. It also meant there was no delay in starting to develop myself in the F3 car, I already had a platform and my engineer knew areas that I could work on in F4 could correlate into F3, which they have done.
Throughout my career I’ve only had one or two years where I’ve repeated the same category, so ideally I want to keep on progressing and not halt at any point on the ladder. You don’t want to get stuck in a series for too long and if you can keep on progressing through the ranks and adapting you learn a lot more. It looks more impressive from the outside as well.
After this year FIA F3 would be my next logical step, though it’s dependent on how this year goes. I can make a better judgement halfway through this season.
FIA F3 is also a big financial investment and quite a tricky championship.
But it’s a great learning tool: you’re on the F1 stage, no testing at all, barely any practice, the hardest tyres. So if you can succeed in that then you know you’ve done a good job and you’ve got a pretty good case for the rest of your career.
“On the Monday morning after the F4 finale I was doing a seat fit for F3!”