Alp Aksoy makes winning start to single-seater career in FTrophy

Photo: F4 UAE

Prema’s Alp Aksoy Hasan began his single-seater career with victory in the season-opening Formula Trophy race at Dubai Autodrome.

There were two qualifying sessions to begin Saturday’s action, and in Q1 a 2m01.552s put Aksoy on race one pole by 0.172 seconds over Xcel Motorsport’s Rowan Campbell-Pilling.

Just 0.011s split Hitech GP’s Theo Palmer, Pinnacle Motorsport’s Niccolo Maccagnani and Evans GP’s Hunter Salvatore in the next three positions, the trio 0.3s off pole.

Xcel’s David Cosma Cristofor was 0.593s back in sixth, pipping Prema’s Payton Westcott by 0.003s, with three other drivers within a second of pole.

Aksoy improved to 2m01.244s in Q2, and he picked up pole again. This time he was quickest by 0.25s over Palmer, with a 0.315s gap to Campbell-Pilling, 0.374s to Maccagnani and 0.44s to Cosma as a second split the top eight.

Among the top drivers, Palmer made the best start to race one later in the day and was able to challenge Aksoy on the outside into its opening corner. The poleman held his lead, and at turn three an incident eliminated AGI Sport’s Noah Killion and Akcel GP’s Yuta Suzuki. His team-mate Arthur de Doncker also briefly struck trouble and was running slowly at the back, before the safety car was summoned as the parked up vehicles were cleared.

Aksoy weaved down the pit straight on the lap three restart, and Palmer stuck with him. However once they got into the twistier part of the lap a gap emerged and Aksoy continued pulling away until the last two of the 13 laps when Palmer reduced his lead slightly to 3.256s.

Campbell-Pilling was actually pressuring Palmer into improving his pace towards the end, while Salvatore took fourth at the start and held the position thereon. Cosma passed Maccagnani at the end of the back straight on lap three, and two laps later he defended against the Italian but he got back through into turn one.

Once behind, Cosma switched to attack and locked up with a lunge at the end of the back straight on that lap. After that he remained in Maccagnani’s wheeltracks.

Yas Heat Academy’s Adam Al Azhari was a lonely seventh, and Hitech’s Scott Lindblom was penalised five seconds for forcing Westcott off when defending against her, which dropped him from eighth to 11th.

Race results (13 laps)