Hugh Barter produced a strong start to the Spanish F4 Championship at the Algarve International Circuit taking victory in Race 1 before backing that up with two solid P4 finishes.

Barter triumphed in the first race of the weekend seeing off extremely tough challenges from Tymoteusz Kucharczyk and Valerio Rinicella in a bare knuckle three way duel.

The Australian is now second in the championship standings after Round 1 behind Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak who is making the switch from British F4 for the 2022 campaign.

The 16-year-old suffered slightly with traffic in qualifying but produced excellent starts in Race 2 and three to counteract that: “Yeah today was a more or less average day nothing terrible but nothing great definitely could’ve been better with qualifying getting a little bit of traffic.

“And then in Race 2 and three had both really good starts getting from P4 to P3 and then at one stage managing to grab P2 in Race 2 or actually Race 3 but it was the second race of the weekend.”

He lost third place on the final lap to Kucharczyk during a dramatic one lap shootout at the end of Race 3 but Barter still took the positives from the weekend: “I just lacked a bit of pace towards the end of that race and dropped back to fourth and then in Race 3.

“Just a bit of fault of my own and poor defending lost me third on the last lap but anyways in the end you know we got some good points and we come out of the weekend second in the championship I think five points behind so definitely a positive weekend and hopefully we come back stronger for Jerez.”

Barter will now undertake a double header of French F4 action which kicks off at Pau on the 6-8 of May which will be his first experience of a street circuit.

Prior to a visit to the world renowned Magny-Cours on the 13-15 of May, a circuit that Barter performed admirably at in 2021 winning the final race of the season.

Image: Hugh Barter Official