- Carrie Schreiner has experienced the best weekend of her car racing career to date with a stunning performance at Thruxton. It’s been a challenging start to the season for the young German racer but she proved her talent with a career best finish of fourth during race two in the British F4 Championship. Schreiner made the most of a chaotic race whilst driving maturely at a track where she has very little experience. After a good first race where she made up seven places to finish 13th, Carrie excelled in challenging conditions to contend for a podium finish before just missing out in the 20 minute contest. It was a tough final race for Schreiner, but she will be filled with confidence going into her next race of the season which comes in the ADAC F4 championship at Lausitzring in three weeks’ time.
Carrie Schreiner achieved her career best single-seater finish with a brilliant drive to fourth at Thruxton. Photo Credit – Carrie Schreiner Racing
Drivers were thrown into the deep end during qualifying on Saturday morning with no test session taking place on Friday prior to the meeting. Instead, British F4 racers took part in a day’s testing at the start of April which featured both wet and dry conditions. However, Carrie was not present during this test day and had to rely on her experiences from limited testing at the beginning of the year. During the 20 minute session to set the grid for races one and three, Schreiner slowly improved her lap times whilst trying to utilise the crucial slipstream to her advantage. Despite ending the session slowest of all drivers, Carrie was just half a second away from 13th, with her second sector times being highly commendable.
The first race of the weekend took place on Saturday afternoon with extremely warm temperatures gracing the Hampshire circuit. Carrie started from 20th on the grid but was determined to make her way forward with a long 20 minute race ahead. With more competitive single-seater starts than anyone in the field this year, Schreiner made use of her advantage to gain two positions on the opening lap, before gaining two more the following lap. Carrie moved into the top-15 by the end of lap three and was feeling confident of her best British F4 result to date. Schreiner’s progress was further helped by an incident towards the front with the young driver now rising up into 14th position. Two more places were gained in successive laps with Carrie now in a very impressive 12th place by the end of lap nine. Reeling off some impressive lap time, Schreiner had a realistic chance of points until Ayrton Simmons made contact on lap 13 which switched the position between the two drivers. This also lost Carrie a large portion of time but she was able to collect her best finish of the season in 13th, a superb drive by Schreiner was showing great maturity in just her second British F4 meeting.
Race two of the weekend took place just before lunchtime on Sunday with Carrie starting in 13th following her result during the opening race. Once again Schreiner made a fantastic start, gaining three positions on the opening lap moving her into the top-10. On lap three a safety car was deployed with Carrie taking advantage of other driver’s misfortunes to move into seventh position. Schreiner then passed Petru Florescu and avoided an incident involving Jack Butel and Devlin DeFrancesco to move herself into an incredible fourth position as the safety car was brought out for a second time. Carrie knew she had to make a great restart and she did just that, breaking away from the car behind her by almost two seconds. This enabled her to focus on the drivers ahead and despite her best efforts to claim a podium place, Schreiner just missed out by just three tenths of a second.
The third and final race of the meeting was held on Sunday afternoon with high track temperatures meaning tyre degradation could become a factor. Schreiner was starting from the last row of the grid with the starting position determined by the driver’s second best lap in qualifying. For the third time this weekend, Carrie made a wonderful start and jumped to 14th, gaining an incredible 10 places on first laps during the course of the weekend. She did well to hold this position during the opening stages but was shuffled back to 17th after getting stuck behind the slower Frank Bird. From then on, she enjoyed a brilliant battle with race two polesitter Jack Butel for the majority of the race, coming out on top by the end of lap 13. Carrie did her best to catch the pack ahead but the task was sizeable without the aid of a slipstream, with Schreiner ending race three in 16th position. Nevertheless, it was a superb meeting for Carrie who has been given a much-needed confident boost after experiencing her fair share of bad luck during the opening portion of the year.
After the best meeting of Carrie’s single seater career, she will be hopeful of continuing this strong form into the rest of the season. It’s a busy schedule for Schreiner as she’ll likely compete in over 40 F4 races during the course of the year, including outings in both ADAC F4 in Germany and British F4. Carrie’s next race will be the ADAC F4 meeting at Lausitzring with her next visit to the UK coming in August when she competes at Rockingham.
You can keep up to date with Carrie’s progress using the social media links below:
Website – www.carrieschreiner.de
Facebook – www.facebook.com/CarrieSchreinerRacing
Twitter – www.twitter.com/Carrie_One
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