Pre-season testing for the 2026 GB4 season has been completed, with KMR Sport’s Alex O’Grady going fastest by 0.7s on the final day of running at Brands Hatch. It marked a great end to a strong run through testing across five tracks, where he was overall top 5 in the dry throughout.
Having faced financial difficulties throughout his single-seater career to date, this was the first proper and complete full season the driver from County Galway since he made the jump up from karting.
The young Irishman told Pit Debrief about the importance of that.
“Yes, this is the best prepared I’ve ever been for a season in single-seaters. I think I couldn’t have been any less prepared mileage wise for 2024, and 2025 wasn’t much better with just 2 days of pre-season testing. This year we have done all of the official days which is great.
“Our pace has been consistently good being in the top 5 throughout those 9 days, so we are looking very good going into this season.”
Dampers the main point of work for Alex O’Grady in GB4 testing
Thanks to the familiarity with Silverstone, Brands Hatch, Donington Park, Snetterton and Oulton Park from his first season in the category in 2025, the set-up changes required were not as big. However, work on the dampers was required to get a better feeling and balance from the car.
“We still worked on the set-up quite a bit, but since the end of last year the car has been much more in the window which meant we didn’t need to make any huge set-up adjustments, just a few things here and there to get the balance right mostly with the dampers.”
A storming end to GB4 testing for Alex O’Grady
In the final one-day test before the season gets going at Silverstone in two weeks from now, the 17-year-old was a whopping 0.740s faster than Fred Green at Brands Hatch on Thursday. He explained how improvements at the rear of the car helped him deliver an eye-opening lap.
“For the last session at Brands we made a few set-up adjustments to improve the stability on the rear which worked really well on the new tyres, so by the end of the session with the track getting faster I still had enough left in the tyres to improve again.
“I didn’t expect to be 7 tenths down the road though.”
A great partnership with KMR Sport
The driver from Loughrea also delivered some kind words for his KMR Sport team once more as they continue to build a very strong working relationship. O’Grady bagged his first win in single-seaters with the team at Oulton Park in 2025.
“I’d like to say a big thanks to KMR Sport for taking me on again this year, now we have a great car and a good bank of data going forward into the season.
“I’m looking forward to going racing at Silverstone in a couple weeks time!”
Encouraging pre-season for Conor Grant and Jason Smyth
Last Thursday Conor Grant made it two Irishman in the top 5 as he finished testing strongly at Brands Hatch. The County Wexford driver is returning to single-seaters following a year away as he also went through financial difficulties that almost every driver faces at this level. He has been gradually building and making gains over the last few weeks.
His Douglas Motorsport teammate and fellow Irishman Jason Smyth is making the significant step up to Formula 4 this year following a magnificent 2025. He was in the top 3 on two occasions through testing, with a P6 as well, showing he has adapted well to single-seaters.
