BRITISH F4
Technical Prowess
The championship has been running the same car – the second generation Tatuus T-421 – for the last four years. It is fitted with a specially tuned 1.4-litre Abarth engine producing 180bhp and, with a weight of just 605kg( including driver), it can reach a top speed of 155mph. The same car is used across many different F4 championships and in F1 Academy, but the ones in the British championship have some important differences.
To keep the racing close and the budgets in check, there is a strict and tightly controlled policy to keep the cars as similar as possible and Mason explains:“ The engine is tuned in the UK by Neil Brown Engineering and also equalised by them, so every engine, twice a year, goes back to them and is run on the dyno set to a strict performance window. As a result, we get really good engine parity across the whole grid.
“ There’ s also a really comprehensive set of documentation behind the chassis which includes the FIA regulations and homologation documents; individual homologation documents for the engine, gearbox and so on; and a set of documents form Tatuus that show an exploded view of the car, listing out every component, defining its orientation and detailing how it must be fitted and whether it can be modified and repaired.
“ The tyres are also very tightly controlled, they all come from Pirelli and they’ re all the same compound. There’ s one wet and one dry and to stop people throwing money at it, the teams are limited to four sets of slicks and two sets of wets for each event. They’ re all scanned whenever they’ re used, just like they are in F1, so we know exactly which tyres are on which car at all times during the race weekend.”
The carbon fibre chassis has a halo, front and rear carbon crash structures, wheel tethers and an extrication seat – which Mason says makes it one of the safest options at this level of racing.“ It absolutely has to be,” he adds.“ When you’ re racing at that kind of age, there’ s a massive focus on safety. There are always little tweaks here and there, but these cars are very good, and they’ ve basically stayed as they were since they were introduced.” between that and the next level up the ladder and Mason confirms:“ There’ s quite a bit they can adjust on the car, such as ride height, wing angles, a set number of spring rates, damper settings, casters and cambers, so there’ s plenty they can do.
“ The front wing has a single plane with three settings, and the rear wing has two planes, the upper of which has a lot of adjustment options. The teams like to keep it simple in some areas, though, to focus more on the driving side, so we do restrict some things, but there’ s still enough to play with for a driver to start to understand what the set-up changes are doing from a mechanical and an aerodynamic point of view.”
There are other ways to expand knowledge beyond the official sessions, however, and although wind tunnel testing is banned, Mason acknowledges that many teams will load up their cars with sensors during private testing sessions in an effort to gain the upper hand. Likewise, he says, the teams are“ massively active” with simulators, which are now pretty much an essential tool for every team and driver on the grid.
“ Once you get into a race, the FIA regulations are quite restrictive,” he continues.“ You can’ t run any suspension data logging or anything like that. We don’ t want to overload the drivers, so there are set-up parameters on the car that we have controlled as well for that reason and also, the more sensors, data and set-up options you give to a team, the more testing they all have to do to be effective, so we are quite tight on that too.”
At the track, all the teams benefit from the championship’ s centralised engineering support, which is led by Technical Manager Tony Kent. It is his role to make sure all the cars get out on track, so he spends a lot of time liaising with suppliers and partners in advance of the race weekends to get everything set up as well as making sure the in-car smart marshalling that the championship runs is functioning before the event begins.
>>>>>
JEP
The British championship also works hard to offer a good level of car set-up options without making it too complicated and overwhelming for drivers at such an early stage of their career. The number of onboard sensors permitted is heavily restricted by the FIA, again to prevent teams blowing their budgets, but there is still plenty of information to be extracted after a session and plenty of options to adjust and improve the car.
Many drivers will have already learned to understand data outputs and modify their machines during their karting years, so it is essential that the championship bridges the gap
Revolution- September 2025
The Wera Tools technical facility helps maintain parity on track
15