Champion Charlie begins car career at Silverstone

Up until now, he has stuck to karts and he wasn’t too bad at that. He is Ireland’s most successful karter and was the Rotax Max World Champion in 2012, Florida Winter Tour Champion and European Rotax Euromax champion in 2013, among other titles in a glittering few years.

Now he’s making the jump up to cars, racing in the Formula Four series which begins tomorrow (Saturday) at Silverstone.

“It’ll be a total change for me,” said the 18 year-old.

“I’ve been racing karts since I was eight so that’s a full ten years.

“Now I’m making the step up to car racing. I’ll be in the Formula Four series, which is a single seater car.

“It’ll be totally different to what I’m used to so I’ve been doing a lot of testing to try and get used to the car, the sheer size of it and everything else.

“The tracks are so much longer, so much wider and so much faster so I’ll be trying to get used to all that. I just can’t wait for it.”

Eastwood, who works part-time at the Nutts Corner circuit, has joined F4 Winter Championship winning team Douglas Motorsport, owned by family friend Wayne Douglas.

Although he blew away all competitors in the karting world, he’s not expecting such instant success in his car career.

“Everyone goes into a Championship wanting to win,” he said.

“Going in to car-racing and winning straight off the bat in my first year won’t be easy but we’ll try and get race wins. This year is going to be a new learning curve for me for the rest of my car-racing career.

“I want to try and learn as much as possible and if I can get the results as well, that will be a bonus.”

Silverstone, of course, is home to the Formula One British Grand Prix and racing on the track is an exciting prospect for Eastwood.

He said: “I’ve been thrown in at the deep end a wee bit in that the first race I am in will be on what is probably the hardest track in Britain. A lot of the guys I’ll be racing against have been racing cars for a few years now so they’ll have a lot more experience than me.

“That’s why I’ve been trying to do so much testing over the Winter, to try and get up to speed as soon as I can. Hopefully now when I get to Silverstone, I can hit the ground running and be at the front right from the start.”

Charlie will begin his weekend with the qualifying at 10.15am tomorrow before race one begins at 14.10pm.

On Sunday, race two kicks-off at 10.20am and the final race is at 14.45pm.