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Deagen Fairclough took part in his maiden Formula 1 test with Aston Martin last week, part of his prize for winning the Silverstone Autosport BRDC Young Driver Award.

GB3 racer Fairclough got behind the wheel of the team’s 2023 car, the AMR23 – as driven to eight podiums that year by Fernando Alonso – around Silverstone on Thursday.

“I’m extremely, extremely lucky to have that opportunity to test drive a Formula 1 car, it’s a dream come true,” he told media including Formula Scout.

Fairclough, whose single-seater career started when he won the Rokit Racing Star competition for sim racers, dominated  British Formula 4 last year and is currently fourth in his rookie season of GB3.

The 19-year-old had a “really important” day on the Aston Martin F1 simulator prior to the test: “I learnt so much technique-wise for the F1 car that I had to carry into the [test] day. It was a really beneficial experience for me, to get to work with the engineers was really helpful.”

Describing the feeling of driving an F1 car on track, he said: “It felt like a dream, it didn’t feel real.

“It was just phenomenal, just going out onto the track for the first time. And I remember just hitting the brakes and it just stopped and I was like, right, ‘we’re gonna have to really trust it today’.

“It was just an absolute dream come true. I’m so lucky, I can’t put it into words and I can’t describe the actual sensation and the feeling of the car

“It just makes me want to strive more and make, make it to top step of F1 and and it’s really given me that motivation to get there.”

Fairclough experienced a significant step up from his usual GB3 machinery, with a typical F1 laptime around Silverstone being nearly 30 seconds faster.

“Like you, can’t get your head around it to do Copse flat out, to have the confidence. Going from like say a GB3 where you’re braking or you’re doing a half lift to just saying ‘screw it, let’s let’s go flat out’ and you’re going twice the speed is really insane.

He added: “Once you’ve processed everything coming at you at a million miles an hour, it’s a nice chill ride. Like, it’s just being so precise and getting everything spot on.

“Maggots and Becketts is another sequence of corners, probably the best in the country, I feel, but to do it flat out and only a lift is, is just like crazy. In GB3 and F4 you’re braking for the first left and [in F1] you’re just doing a a slight lift, it’s crazy.

“So the actual downforce capabilities and the amount of things that you actually learn across the day, it’s a different technique to what I’m currently driving in GB3.

“So there’s a lot being taken on board and I’m really pleased with how it went.”