This weekend Olli will race in his second Italian F4 event after taking a triple podium in the Rookie class at round three. It was a super impressive performance given it was just his second race in single seaters and now Olli is hoping to repeat, or even better those results, at the famous Mugello Circuit this weekend!
The Italian Circuit was praised by F1 drivers new and old when it hosted a test back in 2012. Ex Red Bull Racing driver, Mark Webber stated that he "did 10
dry laps around Mugello, which is the same as doing 1000 laps around Abu Dhabi in terms of satisfaction". And four-time Formula One World champion Sebastian Vettel was impressed too, saying that “unfortunately we don’t have this track on the calendar. It’s an incredible circuit with a lot of high-speed corners."
Olli’s first time taking on this famous circuit was Wednesday 12th July for an official pre-event test day exclusively for the Formula 4 class. Not being old enough to drive in a pre-season test, Olli found himself once again down on track time compared to his competitors but it wasn’t long before he started to get his head around the circuit.
It’s fast, flowing but very physically demanding and slowly Olli brought the gap down to the leaders which stood at 1.2 seconds by the end of the day. Olli’s quickest
time was a 1:48.716 which was good enough to put him 18th of the 23 drivers present. That was the overall standings but in terms of then rookie’s Olli was 6th place with more time certainly to come!
Looking back on the day Olli’s aim will be to get more rookie podiums. He was well within a second of the quickest rookie and he’ll be looking to close that
gap during Friday practice tomorrow. One of the main positives coming out of the day was impressive race pace. Olli completed over 70 laps throughout the day showing good consistent times which is even more impressive when you consider that it is the longest lap on the calendar.
As for the racing the long straights should provide the opportunity to overtake, and mistakes through the fast and flowing corners will be punished. The event is on the
ACI – Italian Automobile Championships package with the Italian Touring Car Championship and Seat Leon Cup also on the bill.
Olli Caldwell
: "Testing went well for the one day I've had at the track. We made lots of progress and I hope to make even more in the test sessions before qualifying."
Timetable (local time):
Friday
Free Practice 1 - 09:50 (40 mins)
Free Practice 2 - 13:00
Qualifying 1 - 18:30 - 18:45
Qualifying 2 - 18:55 - 19:10
Saturday
Race One - 15:05 (28 mins + 1 lap)
Sunday
Race Two - 09:00 (28 mins + 1 lap)
Race Three - 16:20 (28 mins + 1 lap)
All three races will be streamed live on https://www.ollicaldwell.com/live with updates also going out on social media.