Stenshorne takes FREC win and points lead after Antonelli off

Photo: FRECA

R-ace GP’s Martinius Stenshorne won the first Formula Regional European Championship race at the Hungaroring after a brief battle with Andrea Kimi Antonelli.

Stenshorne started from pole alongside Santiago Ramos, with Antonelli and Kas Haverkort on row two, but a slow second phase of the launch procedure meant Antonelli drew alongside on the long run down to turn one.

Antonelli had the outside line and could not covert it into the lead, but then had the inside for the turn two left-hander and moved ahead.

On lap two there was a clash at the very back between Sainteloc Racing’s Lucas Medina and Trident’s Nikhil Bohra at turn one, with Medina’s car stopping on track and meaning the safety car was out until the end of lap three.

Antonelli and Stenshorne got the jump on the rest of the field on the restart, while there was another incident as ART Grand Prix’s Laurens van Hoepen made contact with team-mate Marcus Amand who spun down to 32nd place.

The gap between the top two grew to 1.1 seconds on lap seven before Antonelli went off exiting turn one and was overtaken by Stenshorne, Ramos and Haverkort before he rejoined the track. Michael Belov then got past too, and Stenshorne made use of the clean air up front to set the fastest lap.

Ramos was the quickest of the top five over the next laps but could not get close to Stenshorne. Getting close was no guarantee of making a pass either, with the first official overtake in the top 20 coming on lap 10 when Rafael Camara passed Tim Tramnitz for seventh.

Sami Meguetounif passed Esteban Masson for 13th on lap 12, and then Victor Bernier moved ahead of Roman Bilinski for 11th on lap 14.

Stenshorne worked to put several seconds between himself and second place, which belonged to Haverkot by lap 13 as Ramos started to lose pace.

He spent much of the rest of the 19-lap race resisting Belov, while sliding a lot on his tyres, and dropped almost eight seconds to Haverkort in the proccess. Although Haverkort also had a few laps of closing in on Stenshorne, he still finished 1.827s behind the winner.

Antonelli sat in the queue behind Ramos and finished fifth, with the only other overtake in the top 20 being completed by Bernier to take 10th from Maceo Capietto.

Race results (19 laps)