This weekend will see the finale of the Italian F4 Championship take place at the Mugello circuit in Italy. After a fantastic season, which has seen Olli take four race wins, five podiums, four pole positions and two fastest laps he now sits comfortably 3rd in the championship.
Olli was very much in the fight for the championship at the halfway stage of the season, but the two afore mentioned races at Misano and Imola briefly took him right out of contention. However, with the news he had been nominated for the McLaren Autosport BRDC Award Olli went out at Vallelunga and drove arguably his best race meeting of all time as he went on to take all three victories with relative ease.
With his championship rivals crashing into each other over the weekend Olli has been brought right back into the mix and on dropped scores now sits just 32 points behind his teammate, Enzo Fittipaldi and 41 points behind championship leader Leonardo Lorandi. With 25 points on offer for the race winner in all three races there is certainly a chance that come the final race of the season Olli could be going head to head with the pair for the title!
Before going into more detail about how Olli could potentially win the title, it’s worth noting that the best sixteen results are counted towards the championship. With a total of 21 races that’s a lot of races to drop and with Olli being the only driver to finish in the points every race this season his dropped scores should amount to less. In fact, if five scores were dropped at this stage then Olli would be just 26 points away from the title rather than 41.
Should Olli repeat his success of Vallelunga then the pressure would be on both Lorandi and Fittipaldi to stay out of trouble and finish inside the top five at minimum.The calculations could go on all day but in short it is still all to play for with the championship visiting one of Olli’s favourite tracks for the season finale.
Speaking of consistency as previously mentioned Olli is currently the only driver to have finished inside the points in every single race this season. Should Olli continue that trend at Mugello then he would be the first driver in Italian F4 history to do so! Not bad for a driver in his first full season of single seater racing.
As for the track the 3.2 mile layout provides a number of fast sweeping corners and one very long start/finish straight which should provide plenty of overtaking over the weekend. For Olli he’ll be hoping to keep away from any of that out front and add to his four victories this season.
With a maximum of 75 points still up for grabs winning the title is certainly a possibility. Behind Petr Ptacek is some 66 points behind Olli in the championship and although it is mathematically possible he could close in the only thing on Olli’s mind will be improving on 3rd in the standings.
Olli Caldwell: "I’m really looking forward to be heading to Mugello for the last round of the Italian championship. It’s a track I enjoy and after a great season we now have the chance of winning the title. I’ll be aiming to carry on the success from the last round at Vallelunga and the year with some more victories!"
For Olli, there is nothing to lose, for both his rivals there his everything.
All three races will be streamed live on https://www.ollicaldwell.com/live with updates also going out on social media.
Timetable:
Friday
Free Practice 1 - 10:30 (40 mins)
Free Practice 2 - 14:30
Saturday
Qualifying 1 - 09:00 (15 mins)
Qualifying 2 - 09:25
Race One - 13:10 (28 mins + 1 lap)
Sunday
Race Two – 09:45
Race Three - 14:50