Nakamura-Berta wins thrilling FREC opener at Red Bull Ring

Kean Nakamura-Berta held off a late challenge from R-ace GP’s Rashid Al Dhaheri to take victory in the opening Formula Regional Europe round in Austria.

The Prema driver emerged from a four-car battle with both Rodin Motorsport’s Alex Ninovic and MP Motorsport’s Sebastian Wheldon featuring strongly in a thrilling race, the first of the series’ new era. With drivers having 100 seconds of push-to-pass available to use during the race, a reaction to the lack of overtaking in the Middle East Trophy at the start of the year, there was plenty of action throughout the field.

Williams junior Nakamura-Berta led away from pole, with Ninovic getting the jump on Al Dhaheri, as R-ace GP’s Emanuele Olivieri bogged down on the third row. Up the hill Al Dhaheri was alongside Ninovic, and pulled off a superb move under braking for Turn 3 to drive around the outside of both Ninovic and Nakamura-Berta to take the lead. Ninovic held off Wheldon for third, despite a brief lock-up, before the race was briefly interrupted by a safety car following a collision between Matteo Giaccardi and Gabriel Gomez.

Once racing resumed, Nakamura-Berta drafted past Al Dhaheri up the hill to reclaim the lead, with Wheldon demoting Ninovic for third at the same time. The leading six had pulled out a gap on the field, with Reno Francot and Maksimilian Popov completing the group, although the Dutchman lost ground after Ninovic ran him wide on the exit of Turn 4.

Wheldon was flying, picking off Al Dhaheri for second before the safety car was deployed once more following a nasty looking roll for Saqer Almaosherji. The battle for second resumed where it had left off, allowing Nakamura-Berta to pull out a gap of almost one second.

Ninovic was now the man giving chase closing up onto Nakamura-Berta’s gearbox but unable to find a way through. Into Trun 3 on lap 17 Wheldon dived to the inside of the Austrialian but couldn’t get his car stopped in time to make the corner, letting Al Dhaheri through. With Ninovic losing momentum, the AMG-Mercedes F1 junior made it two places gained in two corners and set off after the Prema man.

Though he was able to close the gap, Nakamura-Berta had enough in hand to maintain his lead, making sure that he kept within track limits having already received the black-and-white warning flag.

A delighted Nakamura-Berta told Formula Scout after the race that “it was a great start to the championship; new car, new season, new category. The team has done a mega job, and we’ve always been very confident. We’ve put in a lot of effort and it’s given us prizes. The level in this field is so high we just want to maximise this weekend” While comfortable that he had enough in hand, he admitted that the “push-to-pass seems quite effective, so it was quite chaotic, watching the mirrors a lot but it was good fun. I had enough push-to-pass at the end to be safe.”

“It was a crazy race,” said an equally happy Al Dhaheri. “I lost out to Alex at the start but then found a great opportunity into T3, but the race was so long from then. At one point I though I wouldn’t even be able to get on the podium as I had dropped back so far from the cars ahead. All of us had a lot to learn from this race so now we’re going to try to put the pieces together. We have the pace so for the reverse grid [race two] it’s going to be cool to see how we can get up ahead.”

Race results (19 laps)