Boya tops pre-event test day for FRegional Middle East season opener

Photo: FRME

Pinnacle Motorsport’s Mari Boya led the way in pre-event testing for the Formula Regional Middle East season opener on Yas Marina Circuit’s Corkscrew layout.

The test day was split into two hour-long sessions, and Evans GP’s Costa Toparis set the pace in the morning session.

He set a 1m43.086s halfway through his run plan to top the times by 0.189 seconds over R-ace GP’s Martinius Stenshorne and 0.363s over Boya.

Six other drivers were within a second of the pace, with the gap between first and ninth place larger than the gap in pace between ninth and 22nd.

Track limits was a big issue throughout the session, with a total of 69 laptimes by 24 drivers being deleted. Evans GP’s John Bennett had so many deleted that he ended up officially having set no valid laptimes by the end of the session despite being on track for 11 laps.

The only five drivers to avoid the wrath of stewards on the issue were Toparis, Stenshorne, Mumbai Falcons duo Ugo Ugochukwu and Rafael Camara – who were seventh and 10th fastest – and Xcel Motorsport’s Noah Lisle.

The pace was lowered in session two, with Stenshorne the first driver to lap sub-1m43s and spending a long time in first place. With 11 minutes to go he was finally toppled by Boya, who set a 1m42.669s to go top by 0.292s.

Mumbai Falcons’ Arvid Lindblad and R-ace GP’s Tuukka Taponen jumped up to fourth and sixth place at a similar time, having been 22nd and 18th respectively in session one.

Lindblad then improved to third place in the session with a 1m43.087s, but a few minutes later he was down to seventh place as Camara and team-mate James Wharton lapped sub-1m43s and R-ace duo Jesse Carrasquedo and Taponen also went faster than the Red Bull junior.

An improvement of 0.005s was not enough to move Lindblad up the session timesheet, but did put him ahead of Toparis into seventh in the test’s overall classification since Toparis had not improved on his session one benchmark.

The other drivers who set their personal best laptimes in the morning session were Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak (PHM Racing), Nikhil Bohra and Bruno del Pino (both MP Motorsport).

This time all 29 drivers had laptimes deleted due to track limits abuse, with the worst offenders being Giovanni Maschio (nine deletions), Camara (eight), Bennett, Nikhil Bohra and Ruiqi Liu (all seven). In total there were 103 laptimes deleted in the session.

Test results